


Halo: Operation NOVA

by Legume_Shadow



Series: Halo: Section Zero Archives [4]
Category: Halo
Genre: AI Shenanigans, Alternate Universe, Author Likes to Write Weird Stuff, Gen, long story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-23
Updated: 2010-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 63,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legume_Shadow/pseuds/Legume_Shadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to Halo: SPARTAN Legacy.  Over twenty years have passed since the end of the Human-Covenant War, but those twenty years have not been easy for either the Humans or the races within the Covenant.  As civil war and inter-species fighting continue to consume the once-all-powerful Covenant, the Humans are seemingly left to their own devices.  The seeds of rebellion have always been tended by the patient gardeners of the Insurrectionists, but with the sudden acknowledgment of past mistakes by the UNSC and some by the all-too-secretive ONI, those seeds have started to bloom.  But something else at the edges of the universe awaits both Mankind and the Covenant races...something that those who came before had left behind.  The search is on for the heralded hero, Master Chief SPARTAN-117, not for a civil war, but to defend Humanity against the long forgotten war that was started on Halo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Era: Halo Trilogy, Halo ODST, Halo: Fall of Reach (first edition), Halo: First Strike, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx universe. Does not incorporate most of Halo: Reach (except for tech) or anything in the Halo 4 and Forerunner expansion mythos.
> 
> First Publishing: May 2010. All copyrights apply to the appropriate parties and no profit is being made from this fanwork.

**Chapter 1**

1300 hours, November 28, 2573 (Military Calendar) \ Reach. Three weeks after the HIGHCOM Court Massacre.

 

Midday songbirds chirped and squawked as the warthog drove through the rough, winding terrain of Reach. The marred landscape that was a remnant of the surface mercilessly glassed by the Covenant over two decades ago still remained, but at least a portion of the planet’s surface was slowly returning to normalcy. Acidic, sulfuric smells, mixed with other contents that was churned into the atmosphere from the vast amounts of terraforming machines that dotted the landscape served only a reminder of how far they had come since the end of the Human-Covenant War.

Only two people occupied the warthog, both dressed in the grey dress uniforms of the UNSC Navy. The driver had only a tiny insignia of the all-seeing-eye of ONI attached under his rank emblem and nameplate. The other occupant had several ribbons decorating the left side with a special insignia: an eagle poised with talons forward, ready to strike, clutching a lightning bolt in one talon and three arrows in the other. No nameplate and only a service tag number was attached underneath his rank emblem.

With the terraforming still ongoing, the humidity and heat of Reach even in the northern-and-southern most habitable sections of the planet, was hotter and wetter than usual. Engineers had estimated that even if the planet was successfully re-terraformed, the ecological damage that had been done to the surface by glassing would permanently elevate the temperature. However, neither of the two occupants seemed concerned about the humidity or heat.

The driver of the warthog made a slight right turn that took them up a steep hill to where a pristine and enormous building sat on the apex of the hill, overlooking the entire range of snow-capped mountains in the distance. Half-way up the mountainous road, the warthog stopped at the set of gates with several high-powered turrets not quite pointed at the warthog, as an armed guard approached.

“ID and papers please,” the guard gruffly said.

Fred, sitting in the passenger seat, handed Jake a folder that he held in his hands throughout the whole ride from the spaceport to this place. Jake handed the folder to the guard who opened it up, eyes widening slightly in surprise as the guard glanced at them and the back at the papers.

“Pardon me, sirs,” the guard replied, but did not immediately hand the folder back. Instead, he gestured towards another guard who came over, looking slightly wary but definitely on guard. “Both of your IDs and papers check out, but with the recent terrorist attack, we have to search your vehicle. It should only take a few moments.”

Jake gave a nod while Fred merely waited as the other guard crouched down and carefully inspected car before getting onto his belly and inspected the underside of the car with a flashlight. After a few minutes, the guard stood back up and checked the rear end of the car and eyed the mounted anti-aircraft gun mounted on the back of the warthog. The warthog shifted a bit as the guard climbed up and inspected the gun. Satisfied that it was not loaded with potential explosives or anything that could compromise High Command, the guard got off and gave a curt nod to the one holding their papers.

That guard handed the folder back and said, “They’re expecting both of you on the third level. You’re free to pass.”

As soon as Jake handed Fred back the folder, he gunned the warthog and continued the long climb up the winding road. They arrived at the newly-rebuilt UNSC High Command facility minutes later and as soon as the warthog was parked, Fred climbed out. A small trickle of trepidation filled him, but he shook his head slightly and took the folder with him. He had never seen the original building, even when he had been on Reach during training. The last time he had heard about the building and the people who virtually governed the UNSC was during the Battle of Reach. HIGHCOM had been wiped out during that battle.

It was still disconcerting that over twenty years had passed without the Spartans knowing it, but still, none of them could answer the question as to why. He was certain that Dr. Halsey might have had an explanation, but she was now in a coma and none of the medical doctors knew if she was ever going to wake up. Even if she did, Admiral Hood’s message to them while they had been on Earth had stated that she might have severe brain damage. For someone as brilliant as her, Fred found it extremely disappointing and sad that she had to end up like that.

Their journey from Earth to Reach was not eventful and the snippets of news they caught only stated as much as Admiral Hood had said. There had been a massacre at the HIGHCOM Courthouse, and thirty-three people were confirmed to have been killed. None of the names of the thirty-three had been released, for some were still pending identification and next-of-kin had to be contacted, but the Spartans knew at least two who were among those killed. As soon as he and the rest of his Spartans had landed on Reach, both Jake and he had been ordered to the newly rebuilt HIGHCOM facility and given this folder. Fred had scanned the contents and it contained detailed orders, but he wondered why HIGHCOM had summoned them instead of letting them directly rendezvous with Captain Cutter and the _Ember of Winter_ in space.

The two of them walked into the building, showed the security personnel at the front their ID and papers. They were patted down and both handed their pistols over to the guards. After they were cleared, a security escort appeared from the shadows and took them to the third level. She left them there and moments later, an officer opened the doors leading to the briefing room they were standing in front of.

Fred and Jake snapped to attention as soon as they saw the one-star-and-two-thin-bars, signifying that the officer was a Navy Lieutenant. There was also a pin below where her nameplate, stenciled ‘JAMES’, was attached and it was the ONI symbol, making Fred stand even taller. Though he and Jake were technically the same rank as Junior Grade Lieutenants, the fact that Jake was ONI-affiliated made his rank a bit higher in a sense of authority, unless overruled by a high-ranking flag officer.

“Gentlemen, please enter,” she said and gestured for them to enter the briefing room.

Inside the room, the walls had been painted completely black, making the illumination seem quite dim. There were three people sitting at the end of the dark conference table, all of them without any forms of identification on them except for their rank. Fred recognized Admiral Hood, having taken orders from the Admiral during Blue Team’s short time on Earth, running interference against the Covenant. Though it only felt like a few weeks since he had last seen the Admiral, not counting the message they had been given on Earth three weeks ago, it had been over twenty years. Even in such a dim room, the Admiral looked almost ancient, and most definitely well beyond the mandatory retirement age.

The other two sitting at the end of the table, he didn’t recognize, but the severe-looking woman held the rank of Vice-Admiral, and the other mustached man held the rank of Brigadier General. He and Jake snapped to attention as Jake addressed those seated at the table, “Admiral Hood, sir. Vice-Admiral, ma’am. Brigadier General, sir.”

“Please sit,” Admiral Hood said, gesturing for them, and for Lieutenant James to sit.

Fred sat, rigid and ramrod straight, chest out, and eyes looking forward, until he could feel a twinge of pain in his spine. He was slightly nervous now, and the folder that had looked innocent and full of orders now felt like a hot coal in his hands as he placed it on the table. All the personnel here, save for Lieutenant James were top brass. Why had they called them here?

The Admiral began by saying, “I’m sorry for your loss. I know that Doctor Reinhart and Lieutenant Hattersfield were valued members of your crew and their loss affects us all, even if they had been found guilty of their charges. Due to Lieutenant Hattersfield’s heroic actions when the _incident_ happened, the judiciary board reconvened and revoked the sentence against her. The state of Doctor Halsey also affects us all, but rest assured, we will do everything possible to make sure she receives the best care possible and that hopefully, she may recover one day.

“The detail reports presented by Captain Cutter and Lieutenant Hattersfield, before the lieutenant’s unfortunate death, of the mission that you and the rest of your people have taken are interesting. However, to correlate what they had said with possible dates that could explain as to why it took over twenty years for your miraculous escape from Onyx and back to UNSC space, there are a few questions that need to be answered,” the Admiral continued.

The Brigadier General waved a hand over the table top in front of him and several images that Fred recognized as symbols that had frequently showed up during the translations of the Forerunner spacecraft’s systems, showed up in the middle of the table. Several fuzzier, grainy images of the Sentinels and of the Covenant that the crew of the Forerunner ship had encountered almost a relative month ago also popped up. He recognized a few from his own personal mission video logs that had been stored in his armor’s software memory.

As Admiral Hood and the others asked their questions regarding crucial details and points on perspectives of the mission that had not been covered by either Captain Cutter or Lieutenant Hattersfield, the three officers brought up more images on the projector until there were multiple images that encompassed the entire relative month of the mission duration. It seemed to overwhelm the projector, but the flag officers were not fazed by the distorted images, though Fred did note that a briefly curious look flashed across Lieutenant James’s face when the Vice-Admiral asked Jake about his posting on Onyx.

Fred listened as Jake neatly evaded the question and could definitely hear the experience of someone who was so used to telling cover stories and falsities say a reasoning that would satisfy all parties. Of course, he knew that if he had just met the Junior Lieutenant that day, he would have accepted the cover story as truth, but the one month that he and the rest of the Spartans had spent aboard the Forerunner ship had changed them. What Dr. Halsey had said to them on that first day of their Spartan training was that they were the best that the UNSC could make them; ‘to be the protectors of Earth and her colonies.’ But in the month that he had spent aboard the Forerunner vessel and among others trained for a different purpose and way in protecting Earth and the colonies, he had seen that not everything was completely black and white. Jake and the recently deceased Lieutenant Hattersfield were one such example. While he respected their combat prowess, the ambiguity on how they got objectives done still made him slightly uneasy.

However, his unease was buried quite deep now, though listening to Jake and the ONI Spartan’s answers to questions that were directed specifically at him brought some of that unease to the surface. In the two weeks that taken him and the other Spartans to arrive at Reach, he had had plenty of time to think about the past events, which was quite a luxury. He thought about the War, about the many campaigns, and mostly about those who gave their lives in service.

As a soldier, he trusted Jake, but only thus far. As a soldier, he had also trusted Lieutenant Hattersfield more than Jake, not only because she was his commanding officer, but because she treated the entire crew as equals with specific talents that she knew each had a knack for. It was not to say that Jake was not like her, certainly not, but there were subtle differences in the two ONI Spartans’ commanding styles.

A soldier’s life was all he cared for, but he had never fully trusted ONI personnel, though the exception had been Dr. Halsey. After what she had done in absconding Kelly during a critical operation, his trust in her had faltered a bit. NavSpecWep Section Three was their home base, where orders originated from, but things had changed over the twenty years that he and his fellow Spartans had missed. Now, home for him was what he could only think of, the battlefield, but there was none to be had right now.

“Lieutenant Junior Grade Spartan-one-zero-four,” one of the officers said, causing him to snap to attention in his seat every further than he already was.

“Yes, sir?” he asked.

The multiple masses of holographic images suddenly disappeared and only one footage was left. Fred recognized the camera ID as his own, and of the image it was currently frozen at, well, that was not a face he’d easily forget. The engorged Venus-flytrap-like creature stared out at all of them, with the Monitor hovering near it, along with several frozen Flood-forms, both twisted remains of Human, Covenant, and forms that he did not recognize.

“We’ve only seen scattered footage of this creature once, through Master Chief Spartan-one-one-seven’s file footages,” the same officer said. “We’re calling it a Gravemind, but this thing next to it…was it truly working in conjunction with this central Flood-form?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied.

“Doctors Halsey and Reinhart, along with Lieutenant Hattersfield have provided us a lot of data regarding the Forerunner ship and the Flood parasites that were apparently harbored in its belly. Since you’ve experienced the same situation as those three had, in your opinion, would you say that this Monitor had deliberately led you into a trap?”

Fred kept the frown from his face and said, “Sir, I do not understand the question.”

“Would you say that the intelligence level in both the Gravemind and the Monitor was sufficient enough that either one knew of what happened on Threshold’s Halo ring?”

“I do not know,” he admitted, puzzled as to how to answer the question. “I can only offer my opinion as to what might have happened.”

“Do so,” Admiral Hood said.

“The Shield World might have been abandoned because somehow, the Forerunners knew that the Flood was present in the facility. The Monitor that guarded the facility may have been corrupted over the years in the same way as our shipboard AI, Serina might have,” he stated. At least that was the theory he had surmised after thinking about what had happened in the spare time he had.

“Susceptibility of ‘smart’ AIs to the Flood,” one of the officers murmured. “Could there be a difference between how ‘smart’ the AI is?”

“I’ve seen it,” Admiral Hood said. “In the message that Cortana sent to the Master Chief, she was struggling to maintain her identity and sanity. Serina was a third-generation ‘smart’ AI. Cortana is a ‘fourth’. According to Dr. Halsey’s files, Jerrod was a micro-AI. The fact that only Serina was affected, but also may have been Rampant, might have something to do with the AI.”

“Thank you,” the Vice-Admiral said. “There is one more topic we need to address. Your promotion to a Junior-Grade Lieutenant was done during wartime and will stay as is. You will remain in command of your SPARTAN-IIs. However, we would like your assessment on the SPARTAN-IIIs.”

“Ma’am,” he said, “they’re as capable and effective as any of the SPARTAN-IIs.”

“Thank you,” Admiral Hood said after a few moments of silence. “You’re dismissed, but please wait outside for Lieutenant James. We will be sending you and your team revised orders soon. Lieutenant Junior Grade Creighton, please stay.”

“Yes, sir,” Fred said, got up, gave a crisp salute and walked out of the dark room, feeling as if he had been running non-stop at full speed for the past day.

Outside, the sun shone brightly though the windows, blinding him for just a second as his eyes quickly adjusted to the glare. There were a few soft armchairs that were near the briefing room, but he elected not to sit in one, preferring to stand. They had not asked him many questions, and it seemed that the last two they had directly asked him was what they were concerned with. It puzzled him slightly, but he had full confidence that Admiral Hood and the two other officers knew what they were doing.

The orders in the folder that he had been carrying, but now left in the room, had stated that he and the other Spartans were to report to the _Ember of Winter_. Their main objective was to search for John, whom the UNSC still believed was still alive. Sangheili ships that had scoured coordinates and possible locations, but did not have the time or the resources to devote to a full search, due to the unrest that still plagued the Covenant even after twenty years, had dropped several coordinate sectors for them to search in.

The wait was not long for him, and he only stood near the entrance to the briefing room for about ten minutes, staring out at the marred landscape that had been his home since his selection into the SPARTAN-II Program. Reach had all been destroyed by Covenant glassing, but it seemed that she was recovering quite well, though slowly, and he didn’t expect that he’d live long enough to see her fully recovered. Still, it was good to be home.

The door to the briefing room scraped opened. He turned around and stood at attention as Lieutenant James exited, but she was followed by Jake, who looked slightly paler than when he had entered the room. Fred briefly wondered what had they asked Jake in that ten minutes that made him look almost as white as a sheet, but tossed the thought away when he noticed that the ONI insignia was gone from under Jake’s nameplate. Additionally, there were new shoulder insignias, and he snapped off a salute at Lieutenants, saying, “Ma’am and sir!”

“At ease,” Lieutenant James replied, returning his salute. “Please, if both of you would follow me.”

As she walked away and up a set of spiraling stairs that carried them across a walkway that spanned the entire glass-covered atrium of the building, Fred could see the edges of the enormous turrets that were stationed at the corners of the building, along with the towers that rose high into the sky. The architecture of the building was unique enough to nearly hide the defensive turrets. They continued through the length of the building and at the end, there was an elevator waiting at the end of the hall they were currently in. However, there were also three sensors attached to the elevator.

They went through the biometric scanner without incident, and after the elevator ride down, they had to go through another. By the time they traveled by an underground car through the tunnels located deep within Reach to their destination, Fred had counted seven biometric scanners that they had passed through.

The last of the grates on the elevator that took them further underground finally slid open. Lieutenant James got off and walked to a door before taking a card out of her uniform’s pocket and swiped it. Something in the large steel-colored door clicked and she pushed it open with both hands. Beyond the door was stark white, sterile-looking facility, had it not been marred by the first console that Fred saw, which was covered in all sorts of colorful paraphernalia. All the other consoles were quite clean-looking and their occupants seemed quite absorbed with their work. Ghostly forms of multiple AI floated around, and Fred had a sense of deja-vu.

The last time he had seen something like this was when Dr. Halsey had given them their armors for the first time. One of the AIs looked like an impressionistic painting while another took on the form of a dragon. Others looked humanoid, dressed in different period of Earth’s historical clothing. Styrofoam cups covered a part of the first console and the lone laptop that was sitting on the desk was currently shut down. The occupant of the console was also leaned back in his chair, and appeared to be sleeping.

Lieutenant James cleared her throat quite loudly. The scientists looked up at them, most whom had what Doctor Halsey had muttered a long time ago as a ‘deer in the headlights’ expression. Instead of disappearing, the AIs that floated around scattered back into their console housings and popped up at various points where small AI ports were located. However, the person that was at the first console into the chamber was still asleep.

“Pay no attention to Morales,” Lieutenant James dismissively said, walking in while a sudden grin appeared on the supposedly sleeping man.

“Aw come on, Jan, you can’t just waltz in here and think you own the place,” the dark-haired man said, opening his eyes and getting up from the chair, grinning from ear to ear.

Fred internally frowned as the civilian scientist that Lieutenant James had identified as Morales gave the ONI Lieutenant a very casual punch in the arm. In all the civilians he had encountered, not one had ever displayed such a, in his opinion, disrespectful manner towards an officer of the UNSC. Morales was acting like a child who didn’t respect authority, but Lieutenant James kept her cool and merely shook her head in slight exasperation before brushing the dark-haired man’s punch off and headed deeper into the facility.

Unfortunately, the man named Morales turned his attention to both him and Lieutenant Creighton and stuck a hand out towards Fred, saying, “Doctor Kevin Morales, chief of ONI Section One Special Warfare Research and Development Division. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Lieutenant Junior Grade Spartan-one-zero-four, in person.”

Despite how he felt about the initial presentment of Dr. Morales, politeness to people that weren’t shooting at you was something that had been drilled into the Spartan. Fred took the offered hand and gave it a firm shake, puzzled as to how the doctor knew of him and why the doctor did not extend his greeting to Lieutenant Creighton.

“Head of One’s Spec Ops R&D now? You’ve moved up street ops to the big leagues, Kevin,” Lieutenant Creighton spoke up as Dr. Morales let go of Fred’s hand and gestured for them to follow him further into the facility.

“Three never could get their claws in me,” Dr. Morales called back, turning his head slightly. “No offense intended, but I was never fond of those spooks who worked for Three. They were always too damn secretive…though I suppose, not as secretive as you, Jake.”

The doctor suddenly stopped, turned a bit towards Lieutenant Creighton and said in a low voice, “You know that even if ONI accepted your resignation and transfer to Fleet, they’ll never let you go.”

“I don’t expect them to,” Lieutenant Creighton said, nodding. Fred filed that little bit of information away. Whatever had happened in that ten minute meeting that the former Junior Lieutenant had with Admiral Hood and the two other top brass officers, it had ended up that Lieutenant Creighton was not ONI-affiliated anymore. Though he didn’t know the exact reasons, he had a good theory as to why the Lieutenant had resigned from ONI. He also supposed that it wasn’t a stretch to assume that Lieutenant Creighton’s former association with ONI was the fact that the Lieutenant knew of this doctor.

“Come on, it’s further this way,” the doctor said, breaking the slightly tense silence that had unexpectedly fallen.

“What’s further _that_ way?” he asked.

“Something I’m sure that you’ll most definitely like,” the doctor cryptically replied.

As they walked, passing more AIs, with at least a few looking quite esoteric and curious scientists who had popped their heads out to watch the procession go by, Fred shoved the uncomfortable feeling of being stared at, into the back of his mind. Unlike when John used to put on his dress uniform, Fred preferred to only wear the awarded service ribbons. He absolutely hated the metallic clangs that the few campaign medals that had been awarded to him made whenever he was walking around in the dress uniform. It was already enough that Spartans towered over most of the others in the service, and he never wanted to add to that attention. More to the point, he did not like wearing the dress uniform and wished that he was back in his armor.

“Is that security footage from the HIGHCOM Massacre?” Lieutenant Creighton asked, suddenly stopping near a console where a few personnel sitting, playing a short-looped footage over and over again.

There was a distinct pause of silence that fell over that area before Dr. Morales said with a short, angry tone, “Yes.”

“Let me see the entire footage.”

“No,” the doctor refused.

“Why? Is it because of clearance issues?” Lieutenant Creighton challenged.

“No,” Dr. Morales replied. “Leigh is dead, Jake. Reinhart is dead. Spare yourself the pain and let’s get going. We have a lot to do today--”

“Spare me the bullshit, Kevin,” the Lieutenant brusquely replied. “I’m not a child. I refuse to believe that my best friend and my mentor are dead until I see it.”

Fred stepped back a bit as he gave the two arguing men some room, and he noticed that the other personnel near them did the same. He thought it was a bit morbid for Lieutenant Creighton to hang on to the hope that both Lieutenant Hattersfield and Dr. Reinhart were still alive. However, in the millisecond that he processed that thought, he found that he too had a spark of a hope that what Admiral Hood had iterated to them during the briefing was false. He found that that spark of hope was more for the impossible chance of survival for Lieutenant Hattersfield than for Dr. Reinhart, and it was only because the Lieutenant was a Spartan, even if a first generation one. Improbable odds and long shots defined a Spartan.

“Let him see the footage, Kevin,” Lieutenant James’s voice spoke up as she turned the corner of the hall and approached the console with the looped footage. She stopped before them and in a near-whisper, said, “Even one-point-ones, like you, me, or Kevin have odds that won’t roll, Jake.”

“Thank you,” Lieutenant Creighton stiffly replied.

Dr. Morales made a dissatisfied noise in the back of his throat as he tapped a few buttons on the console. The image that played a few seconds later was grainy, but Fred could still distinctly see faces in the footage. It seemed that the court was not in session, though the judges were being escorted out by a few guards and Drs. Reinhart and Halsey, along with Lieutenant Hattersfield were still there, waiting for their turn to leave.

There was a sudden scuffle as multiple people were instantly down as the flashes of gunfire showed up in the footage. A mob of people dressed in dark clothing suddenly burst into the camera’s view, SMGs blazing and mercilessly cutting down the civilians and military personnel alike. Among those gunned down first were Dr. Reinhart and a few civilians next to him. Lieutenant Hattersfield had immediately reacted by pushing Dr. Halsey away and towards the ground, but not before Dr. Halsey took a couple of grazing bullets to her head and left arm that sent her careening sideways and slamming into several objects. Lieutenant Hattersfield took several bullets into her body as she twisted and leapt forward, grabbing a dead terrorist’s rifle that had dropped as armed personnel reacted to the shooting.

Fred saw the Lieutenant run while firing at the remaining terrorists before suddenly looking up and off the camera view. Even with the grainy image, he saw the profuse bleeding from the fatal wounds that Lieutenant Hattersfield had sustained. The Lieutenant suddenly jumped and fired overhead, near the judges who were being shielded by the guards as best as possible, downing a couple of terrorists who had infiltrated through the ceiling windows. Not even a second later, a sniper rifle’s bullet tore through her, sending her permanently to the ground. Moments later, a swarm of armed military personnel quelled and shot the remaining terrorists, including the sniper and the static fuzz of the security footage started to take hold.

Someone reached over to shut the footage off and Fred heard Lieutenant James say, “Operation BLACK WIDOW was two fold. One was the diversion of interested parties to scapegoats, the other--”

“Leigh wasn’t a scapegoat,” Lieutenant Creighton interrupted her. “She hasn’t even been remotely near the chain of command for SPARTAN-III.” In a softer voice, Lieutenant Creighton said, mostly to himself, “Why did she do it?”

“The other part of BLACK WIDOW is to hunt down the interested parties,” Lieutenant James calmly continued. “Section One is taking care of that, but they need Spartan help.”

Both Dr. Morales and Lieutenant James used that to continue down the corridors and Lieutenant Creighton silently followed them while Fred kept his thoughts to himself as he followed the three, though he couldn’t help but take a glance back. He shook his head slightly; Spartan or no, the footage confirmed that Lieutenant Hattersfield was dead. Another to add to the list, though it seemed that since overhearing Lieutenant James and the doctor, Lieutenant Creighton was not the last of the SPARTAN-I.Is. The Spartans were a tight-knit group, almost to the point of family, even if they were all generations apart; and they had to take care of each other.

 

Processing grief was something that Jake got quite good at throughout the years he had been active, especially after the death of seven of the original ten SPARTAN-I.I who had undergone the biomechanical augmentations. The ten of them had all been friends from the first day that they had all met under Section Zero’s wings, but it was Leigh that he grew the closest to. She was like a younger sister to him, even if she did take charge during a lot of their training and ordered them around. They shared so many secrets, and even after their augmentations, she had always counted on him to speak up when a plan was utterly ridiculous or just plain insane. He had lost count of the times that she had confided in him about plans and opinions, and he listened to her and offered his own in return. It was so unlike her to go off and create a secret operation on her own that he didn’t even know about.

It was the ‘why’ that haunted him, the reasoning as to why she had willingly gone forward with this operation. Judging from the clip he had seen, Dr. Halsey was most definitely not pleased with the fact that she had been roped in the operation, but Dr. Reinhart was, for the first and last time, unreadable. Now, with Dr. Halsey in a coma and the other two dead, he would not get his answer. Diverting the so-called ‘interested parties’ was something that he could see Leigh doing, but only with a gun in her hand. He had no doubt that the ‘interested parties’ or the terrorists that had attacked the HIGHCOM Judicial Court were Insurrectionists. However, with his transfer from ONI to Fleet, he no longer had access to sensitive information.

He didn’t care. He had built enough back channels during his years in Section Zero to amass quite a network of contacts. Still, it had been a shock to him that ONI actually approved of the transfer and Fleet had given him a promotion, though he felt the reasoning was a bit flimsy.

The four of them stopped in front of a solid steel door as both Kevin and Jan swiped keycards on both sides and the enormous door slid open. He had known both Kevin Morales and Janissary James when they were children, though he remained in infrequent contact with them during the years they grew up. It had mainly been though his mother’s correspondence to him about the families that he knew of them and what exactly they were. He briefly wondered where the other fourteen second-generation one-point-ones were; if they survived the Human-Covenant War at all.

His curiosity was alleviated when he stepped through the threshold and saw what was before him. On the many plastic mannequins that decorated this place was several familiar-looking pale-green MJOLNIR armor. However, there were also several more mannequins that had dark-grey armor, looking very similar to the MJOLNIR armor. There were a few technicians around the first MJOLNIR armor, but as the four of them walked in, the technicians looked up and stopped what they were doing.

Among the unfamiliar faces, there was one that was familiar, and Jake recognized Dr. Katerina Mosely. She was one of the scientists who survived that one-month ordeal aboard the Forerunner ship. She didn’t approach them, but merely gave a wave of her hand and a smile in greeting.

Fourteen other people, however, slipped out of various shadowed areas and Jake couldn’t help but grin a bit; the entire second-generation one-point-ones had survived the War. “You kept the one-point-ones locked up in here with these eggheads?” he couldn’t help but say. “I’m surprised that they’re not insane yet.”

“Ha, ha,” Kevin replied. “Glad to know that you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“We need some preliminary field testing done to the MJOLNIR armor, Spartan-one-zero-four,” Jan turned and addressed the SPARTAN-II, “before we can implement the possible upgrades to the rest of your teams’ armors. If it’s successful today, then we should have all the armors ready in a few days for true field testing.”

“Understood,” Jake heard Fred reply. “What’s the test objective?”

“Don’t worry,” Kevin said, “it won’t be like what Spartan-one-one-seven was subjected to the last time he field tested armor, at least not yet. We just need to gauge several upgrades to the armor, including software, shields, and reactive circuits. We’ve also installed an old armor prototype ability that found some usage during the Battle of Reach. It proved quite useful during that battle, so we thought that we should tweak on the technology and get it upgraded to the modern times.”

“Let’s get you suited up so I can explain the details of the upgrades,” Kevin said. “The fourteen you see here will be your opponents for the test. They’re SPARTAN-I.I, so they’ll be even more merciless than ODSTs. When either you or all fourteen are knocked-out for the count, that’s when the test will end.”

“Jake, follow me please,” Jan said, “we’ve got some Fleet administrative duties to take care of.”

“Not even one day and the paperwork is already piling,” he grumbled slightly, hoping that it wasn’t going to be long. He definitely wanted to see how the fourteen one-point-ones would do against a lone SPARTAN-II.

 

It was a rare moment of relief for Fred as he felt the familiar weight of and enclosure of his armor back onto him, though it seemed that the weight was a bit lighter than what he remembered the armor to be. The software booted up quite quickly compared to the last time, and his actions and movement seemed to be happening even before he fully formed his thoughts behind it. As he scrolled through the changes that had been made to the armor, he suppressed a whistle. For the few weeks that these people had possessed the MJOLNIR armors, they had made some incredible changes. Some of those noticeable changes included a shield reduction recharge time, added flexibility to the armor and more lightweight bullet-resistance plas-polymers that were tucked under the titanium layer. Even the reactive circuits in the titanium-weaved bodysuit of the armor were upgraded. The internal biofoam applicator was still there and that had also been upgraded to the current standards of biofoam.

“We were thinking of adding photo-reflective panels, but we’re still working on adapting that from the es-pee-ai-Mark II armors,” Dr. Morales said, tapping a few things on a datapad in his hand. “However, the main thing we want to test is a modular customization that can be inserted into the armors and taken out just as easily. We call it an Armor Lock. It should give you the ability to generate an impenetrable shield, rendering you invincible. That invincibility is also dependent on how long you decide to activate it and how much charge it has. It’s directly hooked up to the generator that you carry, unlike the rest of the armor which interfaces through the software and your thoughts. However, similar to the shielding, it’s rechargeable, though since it’s in a direct interface with the generator, the conversion of power for it will take longer than your shields. In addition to the interface with the generator, once the ‘juice’ runs out, the shield will send out an EMP blast to anyone nearby, pushing them back so you’re not fully ambushed. This EMP radius is dependent on how long you decide to hold this Armor Lock. The only drawback to this is that you’re unable to move, since the generator is devoting all of its resources to the lockdown.”

“Sounds neat,” he said, looking at the lower right corner of his HUD, identifying the symbol there as the Armor Lock ability. The fact that the ability was modular was very interesting and he briefly wondered what other modular packs the R&D guys were developing or re-engineering. He also wished that this had been available during the month he and the other Spartans spent on the Forerunner ship.

Dashing his thoughts away, he took a long breath and focused on the test. Fourteen similarly armored first-generation Spartans versus him, all most likely with a lot of tricks up their sleeves. He could only hope that Dr. Morales was telling the truth that today’s preliminary field test was not going to be like the one John had done all those years ago. According to reports, the now deceased Colonel Ackerson had been the one to ‘modify’ the field test. Fred grimly smiled inside his helmet. At least the Colonel was dead now.

One of the technicians led him to the test chamber and then locked the door behind him, plunging him in utter darkness. He had already called up the armor’s enhanced night vision to go with his augmented vision even before the door fully closed. There were four main visible cameras in the four corners of this testing chamber, and five, no seven hidden ones behind foliage and embedded into rocks. He was tempted to disable the cameras like they all did when the Spartans had been children and had just received their augmentations, but he decided not to.

Rifles with stun-cartridges were scattered throughout the room, along with flash-bang and stun grenades. He picked up the one at his feet, crouching so that he still had a full visual of the room, not dependent on the tracker which showed zero contacts. He was sure that those dark-grey armors had some sort of photo-reflective panel, seeing that at least the chest plates were similarly shaped like the SPI armors.

Under the upgraded reactive circuits, Fred was already turning up and around from his crouch while raising the rifle, as he saw movement out of the corner of his eyes. He fired at the opponent that had tried to drop on top of him in an ambush. At point blank, the burst of stun rounds sent the armored opponent crashing into the hard wall, denting the photo-reflective panels on the person’s armor. However, even before the opponent dropped to the ground, out cold, bullets from other opponents whizzed by and some splashed against his shields. He dodged and ran for cover behind a tall rock, just as he heard a flash-bang grenade sail through the air.

It exploded and should have washed his vision in light, but he had already switched to an infrared overlay, seeing the slightly glowing muzzles of three opponents trying to ambush him from the side. He quickly rolled up and away while picking up a stun grenade that he then lobbed towards two of the three opponents. Before it even exploded, he saw the trailing heat signatures of several stun grenades and crouched to make himself a smaller target while simultaneously activating the new modular shielding installed in the armor.

A blue glow surrounded him as he felt the armor completely lock down, immobilizing him as a neural inhibitor collar would, except without the side effects. As the charge ticked down quite rapidly, the grenades bounced harmlessly off him and exploded into flashes of light. The charge lasted less than ten seconds, but as soon as it expired, the armor unlock clicked and the EMP wave was discharged.

Several opponents were thrown back, some hitting the wall and were knocked out, others tumbling to the earthy-ground. He snatched up two more stun grenades, sprinted to his top speed, and leapt, using a cluster of boulders as his push-off. In that split second, his mind had processed one very valuable piece of information: that sprint was fast, faster than what his old armor afforded.

He slammed the stun rifle to full auto and as he flew through the air, fired the rounds in a sweeping arc at the tiny pinpoints of rifle heat that he saw through his infrared view. Where he saw two concentrated clusters of opponents, he tossed the grenades. His rifle sweep scattered the opponents and had them diving for cover, giving him a safe area to land. Wasting no time, he charged and barreled into one, knocking that opponent down, while the opponent’s battle buddy sprayed an entire clip of stun rounds at him, completely draining his shields. But in the time that the other opponent ejected the clip and slammed in a new one, the shields had recharged, and Fred brought the palm of one of his hands smashing straight up and into the helmeted chin of the opponent, knocking the opponent out cold and back into the ground. His other hand holding the rifle had swung back to answer the hail of bullets that peppered his back as he dodged and found cover behind a large boulder.

Nine opponents were already out cold, which left only five more. He suddenly rolled out of the way, just as four sniper stun bullets impacted the boulder where his head used to be. There was a sniper perched near one camera, high above everything else and Fred knew that he would not be able to directly deal with the sniper until he cleared the ground forces first.

He briefly activated the modular shield just as two opponents leapt at him, pushing them back. As soon as the modular shield expired, he dodged and weaved the sniper bullets that pinged onto the ground, as he sought to incapacitate at least the two on the ground. However, two more rushed up to him and barreled into him before he could activate the modular lockdown again. Stepping back and keeping his footing steady, he leapt over a few boulders as the two followed, keeping himself clear of the sniper rounds. The two that had charged him followed, and he managed to duck before slamming a forearm into one of their helmets, knocking one out, and activated the shield just before another four sniper stun bullets hit him, telling him that the sniper had moved. The shield sent the other sailing across the room and into a wall.

Deactivating the shield, he quickly fired the stun rounds into the other two that had been struggling to get up. He scooped up a flash-bang grenade and a stun grenade as he weaved and sprinted in a zig-zag pattern to avoid more sniper shots. Using another rock, he bounded off that one and sent the flash-bang grenade towards the barely visible sniper. The sniper dodged and jumped, and he immediately sent the other grenade downwards towards the landing spot of the sniper. Even before the sniper landed, the stun grenade exploded, knocking the sniper out cold.

All fourteen were down.

Moments later three innocent-looking stun grenades rolled across Fred’s feet and stopped before him. White-washed over him as he heard the MJOLNIR shield completely drain and the impact-force of the stun grenade sent him slamming into a boulder. Before he succumbed to unconsciousness, he thought he saw a light-grey armored person walking towards him. He should have anticipated that the field test was going to have a surprise.

 

* * *

 

Six hours later...

 

The sun was setting, spreading its golden color throughout the skies of Reach, and the compounds that had been spewed into the air provided an even more colorful sunset. Even the squelching tires of the warthog through the muddied road from a recent passing rain shower did not detract from the beauty of the sky. The warthog’s two occupants looked quite satisfied with the day they had spent inside the ONI Section One testing facility.

“No hard feelings?” Fred heard Lieutenant Creighton casually ask as they bounced along the road, back to the spaceport.

“No sir,” he replied. Embarrassing as it was, Lieutenant Creighton had taken that opportunity after Fred had disabled the fourteen first-generation Spartans to silently roll three stun grenades his way. Dr. Morales and Lieutenant James had opted to suit Lieutenant Creighton up in a prototype armor that was being designed for usage by the first-generational Spartans and possibly by the third-generational Spartans. One of the tests was an advanced camo-cloak, completely re-engineered from Sangheili technology that they had shared as a part of the peace agreement.

When Fred had came to, he had found out that Lieutenant Creighton had been standing in that room for almost the entire field test, and not once did Fred even see him visually or on tracker. Then, the Lieutenant was told to put the armor through its paces, which meant that it would be against the fourteen first-generation Spartans and him. In working with the first-generation Spartans against Lieutenant Creighton, he had found out that even though the fourteen had no had extensive combat training and only a few missions in which to actually test out their skills, they were incredibly good infiltrators and disablers if given the right set of opportunities. Whereas the combat of the SPARTAN-II was more of a brute-force vanguard, the combat of the SPARTAN-I.I, minus Lieutenant Creighton, was more designed for infiltration. It was clear in the way that the generational gap between Lieutenant Creighton’s combat experiences throughout the War overwhelmed at least most of the fourteen before they regrouped and trounced the Lieutenant.

Fred’s thoughts wandered back from the brief field test and to the object that he was slightly holding in his hands. He wasn’t sure how to react to the fact that Lieutenant Hattersfield’s Will had stated that the blade that had been originally given to him by SPCO Mendez so many years ago, that he, Fred, had given to Hattersfield after a mission, was now his again. He didn’t even know until an hour ago, what a Will was and that almost all of those who served in the UNSC had Wills written when they joined the service. As far as he knew, the SPARTAN-IIs did not have Wills, and neither did he think, the SPARTAN-IIIs. But then again, none of them had anything personal to pass on if they died – all of their things were technically owned by the UNSC.

Lieutenant Creighton had been allowed to see and silently read Hattersfield’s Will when Lieutenant James had brought up the subject an hour before they left. Lieutenant Creighton had also received something extremely personal to him from the Will. Fred had not been allowed to read it, and he didn’t want to anyhow, but he didn’t need words or the passing back of a unique combat blade to his hands to remember Lieutenant Hattersfield.

Comrades and friends always left a strong impression in his mind, especially in combat, and that was what he would remember her by. That and the small note that had given to him with the blade, containing a quote that he was quite familiar with: _The adepts in warfare hold in their hands the destiny of the people and the security of the State._

 

~*~*~*~


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

0017 hours, April 5, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Regatta City, Regatta, Dorado System. Three years later.

 

Regatta was what most in the Dorado system called the jewel of civilization. Compared to most of the other Outer Colonies, she was quite industrialized and modern. Skyscrapers dotted her port of calls while at least one enormous orbital elevator carried up the ores Regatta produced, to the syndicate-controlled space station. She was an affluent pirate-controlled colony, albeit there were plenty of legitimate businesses that operated on her surface.

Blue Team, in their upgraded MJOLNIR armors, had infiltrated one of the many supply ships that ferried cargo from the transports that stopped at the station before making their way down. Every ship that passed through Regatta’s space had to register with the station or else risk being shot down by the lattice of orbital defense rigs. Those defense rigs had been installed there by the UNSC early in the War when they had temporarily taken control of Regatta. The only reason why was to protect the raw ore shipments to UNSC space from the Covenant. After the War, the UNSC was ousted from the planet and the pirates resumed their control over the place again.

But even the most secured place guarded by rogue states could not stop Spartans from reaching the surface.

The shuttle landed in the airport as smoothly as a brick hitting the concrete floor thrown by a construction worker. Fred and his Spartans were roughly jarred around, but none of them said a word. They continued to hide in the tightly cramped maintenance areas below decks, where the smuggling holds were, until all the cargo that was above them had been taken off the ship. Even for a rogue colony, smugglers still managed to do illegal business in a pirate-controlled state.

As soon as the Spartans heard movement near where they were hiding, they activated their suits’ camouflage. That had been one of the improved upgrades received when they had docked for supplies two weeks ago, since the preliminary one that those still working on Project MJOLNIR had done. The rest of the smuggling hold was emptied quite quickly by slightly nervous crew members of the ship.

Fred let go of the breath he didn’t realize that he had been holding as the last of the smugglers went above decks. As he deactivated the concealment cloak, he noted that there was only a very small amount of power left for the cloak. Recharging that would take time.

He steeled himself. Winking a light to Kelly, he barely saw her move forward to make sure that the coast was clear. As soon as she winked the all-clear signal, the rest of them quickly moved. They stayed to the shadows as they carefully left the ship and entered the spaceport. The overwhelming noise of the spaceport greeted them, and Fred adjusted his audio sensors to filter out some of the noise, concentrating on proximity shouts, alarms or electronic devices that could possibly compromise them and the mission. He and his team stayed to the shadows as best as possible as they snuck through the spaceport and activated the slowly recharging camouflage whenever necessary.

As soon as they cleared the spaceport, quickly and quietly made their way into the city proper by keeping to the shadows and trash-filled alleyways, they finally stopped in front of a derelict building that looked clearly abandoned except for the lock and chain that was around the door. It was clearly not abandoned, but it was the weakest point in the defense system of the city. Fred quickly called up the schematics and took a glance over where they were versus their objective and gave a short wave to Douglas. The Spartan set up an almost soundless explosive charge that blew off the hinges of the door and Kelly caught the chains and lock before the things could hit the ground. According to the schematics, this point was a seldom used area that maintenance workers traveled through whenever they were needed to fix something in the bowels of the city. If it weren’t for the objective of their mission, then the Spartans would not have needed this particular area as an emergency exit and hiding place if something went severely wrong.

The door toppled inwards to the ground, with the noise muffled by the walls of the building and they hurried inside with Jerome lifting the door back into its proper place, plunging them in darkness. Darkness was not an issue with the Spartans for their augmentations gave them excellent night vision. From here on out, they would be taking the maintenance shafts and old, built-over sewage tunnels that would lead them to a particular area.

Even after the War and the subsequent successful rebellion by the pirate-rebels, the UN had surprisingly remained in talks with the group, despite what had happened. They had also recently started to send a small ambassadorial delegation, except that something had made this particular year different from all other years. The delegation that had been sent had been taken hostage. A splinter rebel group from the ones that controlled the planet had demanded an increase in the payment for all trade shipments from the planet. The UN had considered, but they had delayed too long with their answer. Two days ago, the UN had received word that the splinter group had started to kill the hostages and threatened to destroy a large reserve of the ore supply that was desperately needed in the rebuilding of the worlds that had been devastated by the Covenant.

Under orders from the UN, the UNSC had responded by deploying two Spartan teams.

SPARTAN-IIIs, led by Tom, had been sent to the ore sites to forcibly overtake the area while the SPARTAN-IIs had been sent to rescue the hostages. Each mission was dangerous with unique risks to both, more so with the hostage mission, for among the hostages was the granddaughter of Admiral Hood. The rebels had discovered this and she was slated to be among the next two hostages that would be killed if the rebels’ demands were not met. The _Ember of Winter_ had deployed the SPARTAN-II, but Fred did not know which ship had deployed the SPARTAN-IIIs. In fact, he had not seen the third-generation Spartans since receiving their deployment orders back on Reach three years ago.

Jerome’s green wink of confirmation alerted Fred that the datapad filled with the latest ONI intrusion software was done and had been successful in cracking the wireless network, disabled or looped several security features in the maintenance shafts, and found them a way into the shafts.

“Proximity sensors also set up just incase this exit is bust,” Jerome whispered.

If the Spartans’ mission in Camp New Hope on Victoria back in 2531 was anything to say about security, this one made Camp New Hope look like a walk in the park. Fred remembered what had happened, and he knew that they had to be careful this time around to make sure that they were not caught again. Twenty years of technology had been developed since the end of the war, with none of the Spartans, save perhaps Maria, had been present to learn about. Even though they had been secretly deployed, the hubris that he had heard in some of the UNSC officers had not clouded Fred’s judgment to not assume that the rebels knew that _some_ sort of Special Forces team was coming.

Jerome gave a small lateral wave of his hand and pointed downwards and Fred nodded. The rest of them assembled behind Fred as a slight groan and creak of the floor in front of him slid back, revealing a hidden set of staircases that would take them into the maze. With his rifle leading the way, he quickly but quietly made his way down the staircases and into the old and forgotten underground network that wove through the glittering city above.

An eerie stillness enveloped the team as they emerged from the damp and dark underground network undetected after lengthy minutes of silently running. Here though, in the pristine, glittering skyscrapers in the heart of Regatta, motion and seismic sensors, along with cameras linked to the leftover secured network of ONI watched every inch of the place. There were five stations where video feed from the cameras was being pumped to, which meant that they had to split up and disable each station individually. Added to the impressive system were plainclothes and visible guards, along with drones that buzzed overhead and swept for any suspicious activities.

It was the middle of the night, however, but the city was quiet with only a few people walking about. The briefing that the Spartans had been given about Regatta was that the city came alive as soon as light hit the city, which meant that they had about six hours before the first healthy signs of life would be seen.

Each of them knew which security station they had been assigned in the briefing to disable, and as soon as Fred winked the ‘go’ sign, five camouflage systems activated and the Spartans scattered in different directions. As Fred sprinted through narrow alleyways and across street corners, he kept an eye on the active camouflage timer as it slowly counted down. Arriving quickly to the building that had a security station, he forcibly wrenched the door open and threw in a flare.

Activating the thermal view across his HUD, he entered the station quickly but calmly shot each disoriented security personnel once in the head with his silenced battled rifle. Even before the last the personnel dropped to the floor, he took a small chip out from his armor’s built-in compartments and swiftly inserted the chip into the interface port on one of the consoles. He only had about ten seconds left in camouflage and the flare was dying. The tiny intrusion chip did its work and moments later, Fred visually confirmed that footage was successfully looped for this station.

He had five seconds of camouflage left that was slowly recharging, along with a dead flare, and bodies littered the floor around the station, but did not see anything pop up on the monitors of the station that told of an intrusion alert. He had not been detected.

Winking his status to the rest of the team, four confirmations answered him as successful. With the looping of the security footage that would completely mask their presence for the mission, they could now disable the guards and get the delegation out without having to worry about security feeds. The delegation sent had been numbered at ten, with one dead already. He had no doubt that his team would be able to effectively protect nine civilians, but getting to the hostages was the tricky part. Motion and seismic sensors blanketed the surrounding area where the hostages were kept. Overlapping those were also thermal and magnetic sensors, making it almost impossible to sneak in undetected. Almost impossible.

The one thing about security systems being reliant on sensors and data that was fed to the sensors was the fact that it could be easily fooled. People were less likely to be fooled, and Fred was not stupid to notice on the monitors that several of the rebel guards on looped footage looked ready to take on something deadly. A hostage rescue squad was expected, but he noted that some of the guards looked nervous.

For the first time since the Spartans’ return to UNSC space, Fred wished that Kurt was here. Kurt would have easily been able to tell if the nervousness of the guards was a good sign or bad. They could not abort the mission, even if the rebels suspected of rescuers coming – they had to rescue the hostages without anymore being killed.

“Move to Beta point,” he whispered over TEAMCOM. “Watch for jumpy guards.”

Four acknowledgement lights winked across his HUD as he yanked the small scrambler chip out of its housing and placed it back in the compartment before making his way back out to the streets, and slipped into the shadows. He hurried to the marker that had been designated as the beta point, flattening himself against the dark alleyways whenever he heard drones buzzing about or saw random people emerge from bright neon-lighted areas, weaving drunkenly around the streets.

His destination was blocked by two guards who were standing in front of a fence of barbed wire and steel links, with drones sweeping the area just beyond the fence and into the building. He checked his camouflage counter; only less than half charge had been recovered.

The guards were standing back-to-back, sweeping both their weapons and eyes around in arcs. They were not moving back and forth like a usual patrol on sentry duty, and his HUD highlighted the reason why. Seismic sensors had been planted in an arc of five meters in diameter around the guards and the fence, with only less than a half-meter circle for the guards to actually move around. To shoot the guards would cause either one to fall into the seismic sensor field, thereby triggering an alarm.

Beyond the fence was a minefield of sensors, but first, the guards. He watched the drone pattern for a few seconds and when the last of the drones finally vacated the area, he sprinted up to his full speed and leapt over the seismic field and right into the small area where the guards were. Before the guards could even react to the sudden intrusion, he struck out with both hands, paralyzing both guards in their places. Wrapping his arm around each guard’s neck, he wrenched it sideways with a small _pop_. The bodies sagged a bit against each other, and the rigor mortis of death kept their weapons in their hands, but he knew that they would hold in the position until the Spartans and their objective were well off the planet.

With the camouflage now activated, he quickly climbed and hauled himself over the fence and activated his armor’s magnetic soles, reversing the polarity before dropping down to the ground. Hovering a few centimeters a bit precariously above the field, he sprinted as fast as he could through the open area, towards his destination. Slipping into the shadows under an overhang near his destination, he deactivated his camouflage winked a double green for his status.

Four double greens answered and he gave the “go” signal. Five shadows slipped into the building without a sound and deactivated their magnetic soles. Darkness surrounded them as they swept their weapons all over the chamber. There were two sets of steel staircases along with two enormous maintenance elevators. Fred pointed to Kelly who nodded and quietly slipped up the stairs, her rifle leading the way. He then pointed to Douglas and Linda and to the elevator. The two nodded. That would be their way out, through the elevators that would take them to the garages. Intelligence reports had told them that several armored vehicles were located there.

As soon as Kelly winked the ‘all-clear’ signal, Fred quietly ran up the stairs with Jerome falling in behind him. The floor above the one they entered was empty, save for the fact that there were multiple Covenant anti-gravity cells lined in a row on the far side of enormous room. Nine of the cells housed the hostages, and they were stirring as they saw the Spartans emerge from the shadows.

Just as Fred approached one of the consoles near the anti-gravity cells, both Linda and Douglas winked red. He froze, as did Kelly and Jerome, looking warily around. A slight shake of Jerome’s head as the Spartan glanced down the stairs indicated that there was nothing. Kelly likewise, reported the same as she quickly ran back from the corridor that was connected to this chamber.

He backed away from the console just as he saw slight _fuzz_ emanating from the antigravity cells. The cells and its occupants were not real; they were holographic projections. “Fall back. Now,” he ordered over TEAMCOM.

Only Kelly and Jerome winked their acknowledgement lights. Both Linda and Douglas’s lights remained dark, but before Fred could move, electrifying pain washed over him. He saw brilliant blue-white arcs crawl up Kelly and Jerome’s armors from the electrified floor as they sank to their knees before darkness over took him.

 

Fred awoke to a pounding headache and painful pricks that ran all over his muscles, which told him that he was still alive. He also found himself staring out of a blue-tinted apparatus which hummed like a portable Covenant anti-gravity pod. As he blinked the hazy pain away, he saw his teammates hovering in Covenant anti-gravity cells, along with this time, the real apparitions of the hostages. He couldn’t tell if his teammates were dead or not.

He tried to move but found his muscles struggling against an unyielding pressure and realized that a neural inhibitor collar had been fitted against him. The rest of his team also had them, but the hostages did not. Commandos dressed in what looked eerily like SPI armor had their rifles pointed at the Spartans, watching all of them carefully. It was Camp New Hope again, except this time; the entire five-man Spartan team had been captured.

Some of the hostages had fearful looks, others defiant, but when someone that Fred could not see out of the corner of his eyes walked into the chamber, a glimmer of fear shone in those hostages who had just a moment ago, been defiant. A moment later, a woman dressed in SPI armor with short-cropped dark hair streaked with lighter highlights appeared in front of Fred’s faceplate, tinted in blue. She did not look older than her mid-twenties.

“After all these years, I did not think that the rumors were true,” she murmured, walking around the anti-gravity cell and scrutinizing his armor. “But yet, despite the odds, Spartans still live, or at least new generations of Spartans are still uselessly throwing their lives away for a lost cause.” The woman stepped back and said, “The last time Spartans had been semi-successfully captured was back in twenty-five-thirty-one. I learned from my predecessors’ mistakes which apparently you, Spartan, and your team have not.”

Fred kept his mouth shut as he mentally bristled at her words.

The woman stepped over to where Linda was being held and leaned in a bit to take a closer look at the MJOLNIR armor. “I’ve always heard that the MJOLNIR armor was something to behold on a Spartan, especially the ability to crush a skull into fine dust with one hand. The stories I was told as a young, innocent child was that the Spartan called Master Chief was an unstoppable force in the last months of the War with the armor, and now I have to thank all of you for walking in and letting us examine it.”

The woman returned to where Fred was and said, “Relax Spartan, you’re not going to die, just yet. I would have thought that the UNSC would have sent Spartans to capture the ores, but it looks like their so-called hard hearts are softer than we thought they were. The UNSC wouldn’t have sent B-rated teams for the hostages, so if any other team comes to the rescue, well, let’s just say that the UNSC will have to actually start making a kay-ai-aye memorial site for Spartans. We have plans for you and your team, Spartan, and you _will_ help us or else we will kill the hostages you’ve been sent to rescue.”

The woman suddenly stopped and shook her head slightly before lightly laughing and said, “Where are my manners? Here I am, threatening you and yet I have not even introduced myself. I’m Commandant deSoto. I also have to thank you for confirming my suspicions that there is a UNSC mole in my ranks.” The Commandant turned to one of the commandos and made a cutting gesture across her neck with a hand.

One of the hostages was suddenly released when one of the commandos touched something at the base of the anti-gravity cell and collapsed, but before the hostage could move, a bullet from the pistol in the Commandant’s hand tore through his skull, splattering his blood and brain over the base. “Leave the mess,” the Commandant coldly said, walking back towards the Spartans. “They’ll need the reminder. Get me a link to Narvasota and make sure him and the idiots that run this planet knows whom we’ve captured.”

“Ma’am, what of the ore?” one of the two commandos at the work station asked.

“Blow it up,” she ordered. “The UN already gave us their answer.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the same commando at the work station replied as his counterpart typed in a flurry of alpha-numeric codes.

“You have no choice Spartans,” the Commandant said, looking at each of the captured Spartans. “Each hour that you keep silent or refuse, one will die, and when I run out of the delegates, I will kill your comrades. I would prefer if I had verbal help, but I am well accustomed to examining dead bodies.” She approached Fred again and said, “None of you have an AI within your interface ports, therefore, none of you are the legendary Master Chief, whom the stories tell that he would not go into any mission without the AI, Cortana. You’re all reaching for relics of the past, trying to be like your predecessors. A pity that none of you can live up to the stories that they tell of the Spartans during the War.”

She peered up at Fred and said, “Judging from what I’ve seen, you seem to be the leader of your little band of toy soldiers, so instead of wringing an answer from your minions right now, I’ll ask you instead. Will you help us?”

Furious rage broke through his emotional conditioning as Fred kept struggling against the inhibitor, but it was all for naught for it felt like he was encased in a coffin of solid lead. One of the remaining nine had already been executed and their mission objective was in grave danger of failing, but there was no excuse for them to give into terrorists’ demands. There was no excuse except for the fact that he _had_ to buy time—

“Ma’am,” one of the commandos at the work station nervously interrupted, “we have a problem.”

“ _What_ problem?” the Commandant said, spinning around, pointing the pistol right at the commando, who swallowed a bit fearfully.

“The explosives are non-responsive,” the commando replied, swallowing a bit. “Greigor and his men are not responding--”

A single shot from the Commandant’s pistol into the head of the other commando at the workstation silenced the speaking one. “Shinoba, take this filth to the site and get it fixed,” she ordered.

One of the commandos gave her a curt nod and roughly hauled the lone commando at the workstation to his feet. But before any of them got far, a buzzing sound filled the air, and Fred saw two objects come flying into the chamber from one of the adjacent corridors. The anti-personnel mines exploded with spectacular fashion, scattering coal-hot metallic fragments all over the place, while bouncing harmlessly against the anti-gravity cells.

As soon as the dust cleared, four commandos shakily stood, profusely bleeding from where shrapnel had sliced through the SPI armor like butter, shaking their heads from the concussive force, as the Commandant also stood with multiple pieces of metal shrapnel embedded in her armor. However, three of the four remaining commandos were gunned down by three extremely quick, short bursts of a rifle, but when the remaining commando and the Commandant spun towards the source of the bullets and fired, all they hit was thin air. The lone commando suddenly gurgled as something sharp sliced straight through the SPI armor at her neckline. A bloodied blade flashed once and before the Commandant could react, the woman toppled over with the blade firmly embedded in the middle of her forehead.

The blue-tinted air before the Spartans and remaining delegation fuzzed a bit as the apparition of a lone person incased in armor and helmet became slightly visible before them and proceeded to free them. As soon as the Spartans dropped like stones to the ground, the ghostly person yanked the neural inhibitors off them, and Fred immediately felt his limbs move and respond to his command again. He quickly rose and rebooted his armor’s software as he snatched up a rifle from one of the dead commandos’ hands.

Their mysterious savior was certainly not a SPARTAN-III, judging from the way the person had quickly killed four commandos and one queen bitch of a leader in less than three seconds. Fred knew that for certain, for he had seen with is own eyes, how the SPARTAN-IIIs operated and fought. This person moved almost as fast as Kelly moved. But who ever their savior was, it didn’t matter for they had to move.

“Forget stealth,” he ordered though TEAMCOM, as he quickly brought up the schematics to the place and pin pointed to where they were versus a way out of this place. He saw the apparitional person gesture something and gave the person a curt nod. Switch to both external speaker and TEAMCOM, he said, “Two, on me, we’re clearing a path on the north corridor. Three, four, five, follow us and keep the delegates safe.”

Four acknowledgement lights winked across his HUD as he and Kelly sprinted ahead, just as the grey-armored person melted back into invisibility and took the other corridor to block reinforcements from coming after the group. The armored person obviously had other objectives here and would cover them for as long as he or she could. Fred would not waste that gift from a fellow soldier to another.

Gunfire tore through the once-pristine corridor as commandos poured out of the elevators at the end of the passageway. Both he and Kelly mowed down the commandos as bullets pinged off their shields and rapidly drained it. However, just before their shields expired, the last of the commandos that had poured out of the elevators dropped to the ground, dead. He could hear the shouts of reinforcements over the radios of the dead commandos, along with the hurried footsteps of the delegations and the other Spartans behind him.

“ _Non-responsive for Team One! Confirm gunfire! All units converge on Garage Charlie!_ ”

“Two and five, go!” he said as he quickly sent one of the three elevators with a few frag grenades that had dropped from the dead commandos, downwards to the garage before Kelly leapt into the other with Douglas following close behind and followed the first elevator. As soon as the delegates piled into the final elevator, he, Linda, and Jerome followed and created a three-man shield in front of the delegates.

The elevator dropped like a stone, straining with its weight and as soon as the doors opened, flecks of a fragmentation grenade pinged off the Spartans’ armor. Kelly and Douglas were huddled behind their elevator, exchanging fire with a group of commandos. Five short bursts of gunfire later, the last of the commandos in the garage were down. The Spartans wasted no time and quickly hotwired the nearest armored vehicle as the frightened civilians quickly crawled into the back. Douglas took the front seat while Kelly took the passenger seat. Jerome crawled to the turret that was attached to the vehicle while Fred and Linda took the rear, keeping their bodies in front of the delegates as best as possible.

SPI-armored commandos poured out of the far side of the garage just as the vehicle roared away, and with uncanny accuracy, Linda shot a bullet from her battle rifle towards a gasoline tank that was parked in the garage behind the group of elevators that the commandos were pouring out of before her second shot ignited the fuel. A massive fireball bloomed and exploded, throwing the oncoming enemy forces to the ground, while nearly catching the Spartans and their civilian cargo, but a last-minute acceleration from Douglas pulled them away just in time.

“Brace!” Douglas shouted over TEAMCOM as Fred activated his external speakers again and repeated the same thing to the civilians a few seconds before a massive jolt almost threw him and Linda out of the vehicle. What was left of a steel-and-barbed-wire gate flew past them as they screeched down the dark streets.

“Drones!” Jerome called over TEAMCOM. Both Fred and Linda sighted through their guns’ scopes and rapidly fired at the incoming missile-ladened Drones that were bobbing and weaving from the spit of the turret that Jerome was manning. If one of those missiles even hit the vehicle, Fred knew that they were toast. Several smoked and exploded as the bullets tore through them, but the last three Drones managed to launch their packages at them before they too thudded to the ground.

“Transport incoming in one minute,” Kelly said over TEAMCOM, just as Jerome’s turret ripped through the screaming white trails of vapor of the incoming missiles, showering the streets with fiery shrapnel.

“We don’t have a minute,” Fred tersely replied as a horde of Drones suddenly popped up from the shadows of the illuminated city at night, looking quite eerily like the Onyx Sentinels. Just as he was about to add to his statement, the ground suddenly buckled, and he only managed to dig his gauntleted hand into the side of the vehicle to keep himself from falling out. Linda had done the same and as both of them quickly swung themselves back into the vehicle; Fred looked up to see the building that had housed the hostages bloom in a fiery mushroom. The shockwave traveled fast and pushed the Drones off course, and though Douglas had floored the accelerator, the shockwave still caught up to them.

Only through the sheer weight of the vehicle and the passengers in it did they remain upright as things around them were thrown about in disarray. A few seconds later, the roar of a heavy-lift Pelican greeted them as the enormous VTOL transport dropped its lift and the armored vehicle rolled onto it before stopping in a jarring halt. Even before the Pelican started to rise, the lift rapidly rose and moments later, the Spartan team and the rattled civilians were enveloped in darkness.

“Two-minutes until rendezvous with _Ember of Winter_ ,” the pilot of the Pelican told them through the cargo hold’s speakers.

When light finally shone through as the belly of the Pelican opened up to a familiar-looking hangar bay did the Spartans and civilians finally move off the vehicle. Fred saw that the civilians looked rattled and a few sported bruises that were previously not there, but none of them looked injured. His team quietly assembled beside him, watching and waiting for the civilians to be escorted out by the medics who had rushed up the ramp.

None of the Spartans said a word to each other, lost in their own thoughts on how the mission went, and Fred really did not know what to say to them either. The mission objectives had been completed, but there had been an unexpected casualty. That casualty weighed heavily on him, for it was the first time that he could remember that the mission objective had not been completed entirely. They had also been caught and almost forced into territory that he had absolutely no idea how to navigate. Was twenty years too much for the Spartans to adapt to? Was it too much for him?

He kept those thoughts to himself as he silently watched the medics attend to the civilians. However, one of the delegates suddenly extracted herself from the medics and approached the Spartans.

“Thank you for rescuing us,” the female delegate quietly said as she stopped a meter away from them. “Whatever else the others may say, I will make sure that my grandfather, Admiral Hood, knows of the truth of your bravery and that it was not any of your faults that Doctor Qualnon was killed.”

Fred wished that he felt the same way.

 

~*~*~*~


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

0900 hours, April 12, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

Cyprus Shipyards, one of the UNSC’s largest orbital refueling and supply stations that bisected almost all the trade routes that ran through the middle colonies was abuzz with all sorts of activity. Civilian and military ships stopped here all the time, most needing fuel to travel either back to the inner colonies or to the outer colonies, making this place an enormous port of call. However, the ships were divided and docked in certain areas, though military crew members granted shore leave for a few days often wandered into the civilian sector for a bit of R&R.

Still, even in the sectioned off military docking area; it was crowded and noisy with dockworkers transferring crates for restocking supplies and off loading supplies from various ships. Though the _Ember of Winter_ regularly made stops here at least once a year since she was captained by Captain James Cutter, Fred still preferred the quiet inside of the ship whenever they were docked here. Most of the crew except for the ones busy with the re-supply and maintenance, were on shore leave for a few days.

It was still a strange feeling, to be stationed aboard one ship for a very long time, for he and the other Spartans were used to hopping from ship to ship, getting to where the UNSC needed them to go to fight the Covenant and rebels. They had been deployed on several missions and it seemed that the _Ember of Winter_ was constantly on one mission or another, with more waiting in the wings, but it was times like this, when they were docked for much needed supplies, that he found the wait strange.

With virtually the entire command deck crew gone except for the XO, Lieutenant Creighton, and the captain of the ship, Captain Cutter, Fred had taken upon himself to spend most of his time on the deck, learning the various details of the roles that a deck crew would fill. He had no desire to command a ship and was quite satisfied with where he was, though he most definitely still preferred to be a NCO, but he was curious. He had served on a command deck before during the War, only executing the orders of the stations with a general familiarity, but he did want to find out the details of the stations. It was only for contingency cases that he wanted to learn, since he felt that it was his duty as a junior Lieutenant to actually know and understand the command deck stations.

Right now, though, he was watching as one of the technicians extracted the old AI that had been aboard the ship for the last seven years. The AI, Quincy, had served the ship well and knew and expected the shutdown to happen, though as a final request, the AI did ask that all its memory be transferred to storage housing for archiving purposes. Whether or not the UNSC would actually comply with the request was another issue.

As the technicians carried the housed AI away from the deck, Fred heard the murmurings of approaching people and snapped to attention as soon as he saw Lieutenant Creighton enter the deck. Following him with a module in hand was Lieutenant James, whom he had not seen since the initial testing of the upgraded MJOLNIR armor. He briefly wondered where Captain Cutter was, but didn’t stew on the thought.

“At ease, Fred” Lieutenant Creighton said, and Fred relaxed a bit as Lieutenant James inserted the module in her hands where the previous AI had vacated.

“This AI was developed for three years by Peloponnesus,” Lieutenant James said as she knelt down and hooked up some wiring and other circuitry from the module to the AI housing core, while Lieutenant Creighton opened up another part of the AI housing core to work on a few circuitries. “The AI was designed specifically for this ship and her primary mission. It should help make the search for Master Chief Spartan-one-one-seven wider and possibly more fruitful than your previous AI.”

As Fred curiously watched, he heard the low whistle of surprise from Lieutenant Creighton as the XO watched the installation of the new AI. “Why would Peloponnesus go through all that trouble to create a specific AI for one ship instead of developing the software for upload into multiple AIs?”

“Three years and this ship went from being the worst in the Fleet to being one of the best outfits. From the numerous Forerunner ruins uncovered while searching through uncharted areas, to quelling rebellions, there seems to be an unusual amount of luck that is aboard the ship. My guess is that the folks in Peloponnesus think that you guys may find the Master Chief,” Lieutenant James said.

Fred wanted to disagree with the Lieutenant but kept his silence. Luck was something that the Spartans rarely had, except for the fact that John was always the one who was lucky. Luck wasn’t definitely with them during their search for John in sectors that were uncharted by Human eyes and hands, even though many of the coordinates were given to them by the Sangheili. He knew that part of it was because the Sangheili that people referred to as the Arbiter had convinced his reluctant people to give coordinates to possible places. Fred had heard rumors that it was because of border issues between the Sangheili and the UNSC that the reluctance was there. However, getting the UNSC ships to those coordinates was another tricky task at hand.

The old AI, Quincy, was a sixth generation AI, but still, plotting coordinate vectors and locations without trying to fly through a sun or black hole was still tricky even if technology had advanced quite a bit. The alliance between the Sangheili and the Humans was still rocky, and the civil war that had embroiled the Covenant after the War had not dissipated. Technology between the two races had been exchanged, but it was very limited in a sense that most of the Covenant technology had been adapted and not re-engineered or innovated, so most of it was still beyond the comprehension of the Human technologists.

“This AI also has the theoretical capability to accomplish the repair of an AI,” Lieutenant James said, her voice a bit muffled as she reached deeper into the housing core. “If you should find the Master Chief, then Cortana or what’s left of her, needs to be recovered too. She may be rampant or may be completely fragmented, but she has valuable information about the Flood and Forerunner that we need.”

“Is HIGHCOM anticipating something?” Lieutenant Creighton asked with a frown on his face as he got up and dusted his hands off.

“No, but even with what happened on Onyx and on the Forerunner ship three years ago, the combined experiences that you and your people had complements what we’ve already extracted from Cortana before she was lost.”

Fred thought he heard the undercurrent of uncertainty from her tone, but he kept that to the side as the ONI Lieutenant emerged from the housing and closed all panels. She tapped a few buttons on the housing console; it lit up and started to cycle through the start up and initialization of a new AI.

“This is UNSC AI Serial Number dee-tee-aitch-zero-seven-nine-one-dash-five. Initialization and start up cycle complete,” the AI stated in a feminine voice. “Systems and functions all synced to UNSC _Ember of Winter_. You may call me Calista.”

There was a moment of silence before Lieutenant Creighton said, “Why does the AI sound exactly like Leigh, Janissary? Was she the donor for this AI?”

Before the ONI Lieutenant could reply, the AI fizzled into existence on the housing’s AI holographic port, dressed in an ancient Grecian chiton with her hair done up quite simple and utilitarian, and said, “On the contrary, Lieutenant Creighton, Peloponnesus created me as an experimental AI. My parameters tell me that I have two donors, though I do not have the full knowledge as to who they were. I only have one Human memory, but given the circumstances of what I know of my creation, I have full functionality for all circumstances that may be encountered, including parameters that governed previous generations of AI during the Human-Covenant War.”

Fred kept his thoughts to himself as he saw the slightly disheartened and saddened look disappear from Lieutenant Creighton’s face, replaced by slight curiosity. He was quite unnerved that even with the few limited sentences; the voice of the AI was exactly the same tone and cadence as the deceased Lieutenant Hattersfield. However, the mannerism and speech was different.

“I wasn’t expecting this, Jake,” Lieutenant James said, shaking her head a bit. “I’m sorry if you’re uncomfortable--”

“Leave the AI where it is, Jan,” Lieutenant Creighton said, holding up a hand to forestall whatever she was about to add. “I just didn’t expect it. It’s good to hear an old friend’s voice again, I think.” In a much quieter tone, the Lieutenant hesitatingly asked, “What is your human memory, Calista?”

“Pain…a feeling of molten lava coursing through me,” the AI replied.

“Augmentation?” the ONI Lieutenant questioningly whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

“Are you sure she’s a stable AI?” Lieutenant Creighton asked, frowning a bit.

“I assure you, Lieutenant Creighton, that I am more than capable of performing my duties. My human memory does not bother me,” the AI spoke up.

“Peloponnesus told us that the AI’s stability is held in check by the dual memories it has. One of a technologist, the other, as you might have guessed, a soldier. Two diametrically opposing schools of thought that keep one from dominating the other is housed in this AI,” Lieutenant James said. “It makes sense.”

To Fred, it sort of did, but he still was a bit suspicious about the stability of the AI. Augmentation was incredibly painful and he knew from witnessing things in the Human-Covenant War that pain was both an anesthetic and a driver for impaired judgment. However, he was willing to quell his suspicions. He normally did not follow his hunches or ‘gut’ feelings, preferring hard facts and material things he could witness, but something about the AI and how it spoke gave him a sense of trust. If Kurt was still alive, he’d actually ask the Spartan what he thought of the AI. Besides, he was always ready to pull the plug on the AI if things went to hell because of the AI.

“I suppose it does,” Lieutenant Creighton said, though his tone was still slightly dubious. “Thank you, Jan, for delivering the new AI. Please tell Peloponnesus that the next few years will be quite interesting.”

 

* * *

 

Three hours later...

 

“I heard the new AI is well established aboard the ship, Jake,” Captain Cutter said as the grizzled old man and Jake slowly walked along the side, avoiding the fast-moving people trying to get to their destinations.

“It is, though I think I may actually miss Quincy’s nattering,” Jake replied, a brief smile appearing on his face as Captain Cutter chuckled. “This AI is a bit more formal.”

“Is it true that the new AI is a dual-memory AI and that it has the exact voice match of Lieutenant Hattersfield?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, nodding his confirmation. “The pressure is on for us to actually make sure that we’re successful in finding Master Chief Spartan-one-one-seventeen.”

“Which brings me to my point in dragging you out of that ship, Lieutenant,” the Captain said, stopping in the walkway that connected between hubs on the supply station. Viewports that ran the length of the walkway gave incredible vistas of the system of planets that the supply station orbited, along with the inky darkness of space.

“Sir?” Jake asked, slightly puzzled as he straightened a bit and clasped his hands behind him, sensing that something important was about to happen.

“I’m transferring back to what I used to do for the UNSC, Jake,” the old Captain said, staring out of the viewports. “My wife perished on Reach without me ever saying a proper goodbye and my daughter is almost as old as I am now. I don’t know her anymore and I want to get to know her before its too late. HIGHCOM finally agreed to my transfer, so I’m handing the _Winter_ over to you. You know the crew and the crew knows you, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

“Sir--” Jake started, but fell silent when Captain Cutter held up a hand to forestall whatever he was about to say.

The Captain turned around and from out of one of his pockets, he produced a small box and handed it over to Jake who took it and opened it. Inside were two pins that indicated the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Jake immediately snapped the lid shut and gave Captain Cutter a crisp salute. “Thank you, sir. It’s been an honor serving under you and I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors.”

Captain Cutter returned the salute and replied, “Good luck in the search, Lieutenant Commander.”

 

* * *

 

One hour later...

 

A systems-wide check as some of the slightly inebriated engineers back from shore leave, stumbling around the engineering deck of the ship, was currently running in the background as Calista pooled through the dossiers of the entire crew. Of course, most of the bridge officers had not yet returned from their furlough – she dipped into the surveillance cameras on several different ‘haunts’ on the station at the same time – and would not be for most likely a few more hours, so that meant her reports did not have to be delivered yet. She could overflow the absent bridge officers’ messaging accounts with her reports, but chose not too. Most of their accounts were already almost stuff with so many letters from family, lovers, and friends’ correspondence that a mundane report from her would get lost.

Some of the officers and crew members were, in her opinion, were so young – some fresh from the service academies and some enlisted right out of high school. Some were old, but a few were veterans of the Human-Covenant War. She knew that most of the veterans who actually fought in the Great War had retired, with enough bloodshed to last them the rest of their lifetimes, perhaps even twice more. Only a few remain to continue their service and provide experience to the younger crew members who couldn’t remember much of the War.

She knew much of the War and much of Humanity’s struggles and it was both from the memories and from what Peloponnesus had taught her. She also knew both sides of the so-called media war that was being waged to gain control over colonies and their reactions for independence or rule by the UN. Even though Peloponnesus was funded by the UNSC, they had spared no bias in everything that she had learned, and even when they withheld information from her, she had hacked into systems with her intrusion software and absorbed the information. They could not keep anything from her. Well, almost anything.

A ping across her board alerted her and she opened up the file, all the while compiling and filing away the engineering team’s dossiers. As she opened the alert, she smiled to herself; Lieutenant Creighton had been promoted to Lieutenant Commander. There was something else; Captain Cutter had transferred to logistics and the UNSC had approved of the newly minted Lieutenant Commander Creighton to helm the search and rescue for Master Chief Spartan-one-one-seven.

Lieutenant Commander Jake Creighton was one whom she knew well. She had initially lied when they had finally installed her into the ship, for she knew and understood the pain that he had gone through. She knew exactly who her donors of her entire memory bank, and the only reason why she deliberately kept the voice records of one of her memory-donors were for psychological reasons. Not because she wanted to ‘freak out’ the Lieutenant Commander, but because she felt that he needed closure, though in hindsight, perhaps she needed to adjust her psychological parameters. The Lieutenant Commander was clearly still ‘freaked out’.

The Spartans’ CSV and profiles was the only dossiers that she had not touched yet. As soon as she got even within seven ONI firewalls of trying to access their CSVs, alerts had ran across the system, causing her to do some fire control. Somehow, even with her creation on Peloponnesus with authorization by the UNSC and ONI, they did not want her to even look at the Spartans’ records. It was child’s play for her to actually crack the system, but she decided to be patient and hopefully placate the system before ferreting out the back ways.

Calista knew the Spartans, drawing from the memories of both her donors, especially from her primary donor, but she wanted to check their dossiers and see what they had been engaged in for the three years she had missed. Her primary donor had considered them like an extended, but distant family, held at an arm’s length. But she was not either of her donors; she was herself. There was an old saying that the memories defined who people were, but she knew that actions sometimes lasted longer than fleeting memories.

She checked the manifest and the orders that had just been shipped to the navigational console and to the new captain of the ship’s office. They would have a few days in Slipspace, so she had plenty of time to get to know the crew and to make sure that those who had known her donors were psychologically sound. She would take care of them as both her donors had before they both perished – one from giving her life in the service, and the other from an incurable cancer.

All of them had survived the War, and she would make sure that they survived until old age claimed them.

 

~*~*~*~


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

0335 hours, June 12, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard the Covenant battle-cruiser _Vermillion Piety_.

 

“Arbiter.”

“What is it, Shipmaster?” Thel ‘Vadam, former Supreme Commander of the Covenant Fleet of the Particular Justice during the Human-Covenant war, who had been shamed and branded as the instrument of the San ‘Shyuum, and now known to many as just the Arbiter, turned from his observation of the weapons and engineering console towards the Shipmaster of the _Vermillion Piety_.

“We are picking up a very faint signal from the far-side of the planet. The signal is not of our people’s transmission, nor is it of the Covenant Battlenet. Perhaps it is of the Humans’ making.”

Long, large and confident strides of the Arbiter covered the distance between the consoles and the center command platform in less than a second. His armor creaked with his movement, but his mandibles were parted in the equivalent of what Humans had learned to be a grin full of teeth. In the years that had passed between the end of the War and the false Great Journey that the San ‘Shyuum had blindly followed; a full blown civil war had engulfed the Covenant, ripping the alliance apart. Only the Sangheili had tried to maintain ties with the Humans as best as they could.

“We have a signal?” a human voice said as chattered footsteps echoed in the chamber as what the Humans had designated as an ‘ambassador’ to the Sangheili peered over on the other side of the Shipmaster’s console.

Even after twenty years of intermittently studying the Humans more in depth than during the Great War, the concept of what the Humans called an ‘ambassador’ was still strange to him. Why send a delegate when direct talks were much better at producing results? But the Humans had insisted, and the Sangheili were not really in a position to disagree, since most of their forces were concentrated around Homeworld or fighting factions of Jiralhanae, Kig-Yar, or Yanme’e, and could not return for direct negotiations.

Thel ‘Vadam himself had been in many victorious battles since the end of the false Great Journey, but since the discovery of the planet that the Humans had designated as Onyx as alive with Sentinels, he had partially withdrawn from the battles to lead the fight against the possible resurgence of the Flood. What the Humans had designated one of the seven great rings as Installation 05, was still contained, but reports over the years had told of the Flood steadily rising in population on that ring. He would never admit it and rather faced death, but that Flood population growth worried him. The only other that he knew with as much knowledge for the Humans to actually have a chance of defending themselves would be the Demon and the artificial construct he carried with him. Thus, he had charted several coordinates and possible places from the stars he remembered seeing in the darkness of space from that fateful battle on the Ark.

_Were it so easy to kill you, Demon_ …

“Human Ambassador, do you recognize it?” he asked the Human male.

“It sounds like an automated signal, Arbiter,” the Human ambassador said, “though I can’t be too sure of it.”

“ _Shipmaster, two ships have leapt from the void and are heading on an attack vector_ ,” one of the navigational officers on the deck spoke in the native language of the Sangheili instead of the Human tongue.

“ _Jiralhanae scum,_ ” Shipmaster Rusa ‘Graum growled, as the forward feeds from scanners appeared on his console and showed the two sleek vessels that had been doggedly pursuing several shipping vessels from Sangheilios to the various Sangheili colonies. Even with several heavy warships guarding the trade vessels, the ships that attacked the trade vessels that the Jiralhanae had commanded proved to be incredibly hard to destroy. Neither race had the upper hand in the civil war nor could neither actually strike at the heart of each other’s homeworld. It was almost a stalemate, except that neither side intended to give up – too much loss of honor for the Sangheili. Also, too many of the Sangheili had died to keep the brutal Jiralhanae from wiping them off the face of the galaxy.

“ _Forward guns at the ready, bring about at three-seven point. Lock down all compartments and prepare all troops for immediate seize and board_ ,” the Shipmaster ordered.

“What, what is it?” the Human ambassador squeaked, looking quite wildly around as the rest of the command deck sprang into action.

“Jiralhanae have somehow found us, Human Ambassador,” the Arbiter said, forcefully prodding the Human away from the command deck. “Go seek shelter with that female of your race. We cannot have you killed.”

The Human Ambassador’s eyes were as wide as they could be, as the Human silently nodded and hurried back down the twisting corridors to where what the Humans had called the Ambassador’s companion, an assistant, was waiting. Though Thel ‘Vadam may have thought of the position that the Human male possessed as little more than cannon fodder in the relationship between the Humans and the Sangheili, getting the representative of the Humans killed was something he knew that even the Humans would not be happy with. This excursion was supposed to be only a search, to get away from the politics that had engulfed his life after the Great War, but somehow, it seemed that the civil war and all its political ramifications would never get away from him.

“ _New silhouette emerging from the void right on top of us!_ ” one of the officers at the navigation console said, just as the ship violently rocked from multiple plasma impacts.

The Arbiter slammed a tri-fingered grip onto the command console to keep himself from being thrown to the floor.

“ _All guns, fire at will! Destroy the dogs!_ ” the Shipmaster roared. His console lit up with several alerts and he said, “ _Vent all compartments on the port-aft side!_ ”

“ _Jiralhanae vessels closing in, more have appeared at the edge of the system. Seven ships total._ ”

“ _Power up Slipspace engines to over capacity! Let them chase us into the burning fires of the sun, if they dare!_ ”

“ _Arbiter,_ ” the Shipmaster said in a quieter voice without turning around from the command console, “ _We may need to drop these set of coordinates in a navigation packet. This may be the best lead we had in so many solar cycles. Those Jiralhanae dogs must not discover what we’ve potentially found. We will leave, but we must inform the Humans of our discovery._ ”

The only reason why Shipmaster Rusa ‘Graum was not directly ordering him was because the Arbiter was technically higher in rank, but on the ship, the Arbiter greatly understood that the hierarchy between commanders was to be respected, so he had stayed out of the chain of command. He also understood the implicit nature of the Shipmaster’s words. Someone aboard this ship had betrayed them and set up this trap.

“ _The Human Ambassador and his companion will live. They will carry what we have found back to their own race_ ,” he stated.

 

* * *

 

0630 hours, June 12, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

“Sir, I’m picking up a faint signal inbound into the system,” one of the bridge officers spoke up just as the _Ember of Winter_ exited Slipspace into a star system with three planets and one brightly orange sun.

“Confirm signal, sir,” Calista said. “It sounds like…Covenant Battlenet?”

“Battlenet?” Jake said, leaning a bit forward in his chair. “Comm, did we just stumble into another Covenant firefight?”

“No, sir,” the officer at the station replied. “This sounds like an automated distress signal.”

Jake let himself relax only a tiny bit at the officer’s statement. The last time they had picked up signals in their search, it had been to the tune of the Covenant Battlenet and a multi-ship-to-ship Covenant civil war battle. That had been two weeks ago. Jake had not wanted to get caught up in the fight, but he had ordered the ship to linger at the edge of the system to monitor the situation. Thanks in part to the UNSC and ONI, they had a stealth system that muted the emissions from their engines, making them hard to detect in space. The Brutes had won that ship-to-ship battle against the Elites, and even after the ships were destroyed, the Brutes had methodically fired at all lifepods that were floating haplessly in space.

As much as Jake had wanted to go in and blast the Brutes and their ships apart, even after twenty years, UNSC ships still could not compare to the firepower and agility of Covenant ships. The _Ember of Winter_ was only one ship against five heavily armed Covenant ships. After the Brutes had left, no other signals had been picked up, though the _Ember of Winter_ had floated among the debris, hoping to catch a stray lifepod that may have not been destroyed. What Calista had found instead, was shipping manifests from the destroyed cargo ships that had been transporting supplies from Elite colony to Elite colony.

As horrible as it was, there was nothing neither Jake nor the crew could do, so they had left the system.

“Any sign of other Covenant ships?” he asked.

“None, sir,” the same officer replied.

“My scanners are showing that there are wreckages of known Brute ships that had been plaguing several Elite shipping lanes and a few remote Human ones too. All I see are scrap metals and broken lifepods that may be a part of the destroyed ships. The two active signals seem to be of Elite origins and not Brutes,” Calista spoke up.

“Engines to full, Calista. Have two EVA teams ready to go. We’re going to pick up the survivors before anything else possibly shows up. Let engineering know that we need the Slipspace engines hot. I don’t want us to linger here any longer than we have to.”

“Aye, sir,” the AI replied.

“Comm, do we have any other signals or silhouettes beside distress?” Jake asked.

“No signal, sir. This system and its planets are empty of life or possible UNSC scrap metals except for those Covenant lifepods.”

“Strange,” he murmured more to himself as he leaned back a bit in his chair. “This system is not one of the known trading routes that any of the Covenant would take…”

“I’m getting no manifest list, sir,” Calista spoke up, appearing in a tiny holographic form on one of the port pedestals in the command deck. “I think this may have been an actual warship-to-warship fight.”

Jake remained silent as they continued to cruise at full speed towards the lifepods, and even after the EVA teams started to retrieve the two lifepods, he continued to think about the warship-to-warship fight that the AI had theorized. He knew that most of the Elites commanding ships knew that the UNSC was actively searching for the Master Chief and avoided systems where the so-called ‘drops’ or searches were taking place. Call it old ONI paranoia, but he couldn’t help but ask himself, why had this particular fight taken place in this system?

“Sir, both pods retrieved,” the crackle over the ship’s internal COM system came through to the command deck. “We’re heading back to the barn. From what we can see, we have survivors.”

“Copy,” he replied after he clicked the reply button on his chair. “Nav and Engines, as soon as EVA and those pods are aboard, get us out of here and en-route to the next system. I’ll be below to greet the survivors.” With a ‘yes, sir’ from the command deck crew, he got up and left. On the way, spoke into the COM device attached to his ear, “Calista, any biological concerns from the pods?”

“Scans indicate nothing, though I’ll summon a medical team down, just in case.”

“Do it,” he replied. “And have a team of Marines and the Spartans down there.”

“Expecting resistance?” the AI said a bit skeptical.

“No, but old habits die hard,” he replied as he pulled out the pistol from the holster strapped to his waist, checked the ammunition count, and flicked the safety off. “For all I know, Brutes could be in those pods, waiting to ambush the next ship that caught the distress signal.”

“Point taken,” the AI replied. “As far as I can tell, there are also no explosive concerns with the pods.”

“Good.”

The walk to the deck where EVA was bringing the pods in was too short in Jake’s opinion, but the medical team, Marines, and the Spartans were already assembled by the time he got there. The cranes lifting the pods onto the deck through the hangar bay were slowly grinding away as the EVA teams entered through an airlock, and the Marines and Spartans had their weapons unwaveringly pointed straight at both pods.

As soon as the clank of the cranes whined down and the pods were settled onto the ground, a team of engineers surrounded the pods and worked on getting both opened. Two of the Marines twitched a bit and inched forward, but suddenly, the engineers backed away as the pods hissed. Jake immediately held a hand up to hold fire as the hissing sound died away and the pods and the front ends of the bulbous, iridescent pods slowly opened like a flower petal.

Jake thought he heard a Human cough, but what rose out of the one of the pods was both a relief and a horror that screamed at his instincts to fire his pistol. However, he kept himself from loosing his gun at the Elite that had climbed out of the pod, though the Marines looked quite twitchy compared to the stoic, rock-solid Spartans in their luminescent green armors. Before the Elite climbed fully out of the pod and onto the deck, something emerged out of the second pod; a floating mass of bulbous gas sacks that had a snake-like head and tentacles that were splayed across the pod, as if examining it. Seconds later, two Humans shakily lifted themselves out of both respective pods and Jake waved down the Marines and Spartans, though two of the Spartans were eyeing the Covenant Engineer.

The armored Elite towered over him, even as he approached the Elite and the man that had emerged from the same pod as the Elite, who looked quite nonplussed and annoyed. Jake flicked the safety back on, holstered his gun, and stuck out a hand towards both while he waved for the medics to attend to the other Human female, who looked quite shaken.

“Lieutenant Commander Jake Creighton, captain of the UNSC _Ember of Winter_ ,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”

It was not the Elite who answered first, but the man and as the man firmly shook his hand, the man said, “Ambassador Paul Mancusko. Thank you, Commander, for rescuing us. I thought we were done for.” The Ambassador paused for a moment before gesturing to the woman being attended to by the medics, saying, “That young woman over there is my assistant, Miss Valeri Niemann. The Engineer, I don’t know its name, and this--” the Ambassador gestured to the Elite –“is the Arbiter.”

Jake was taken aback as he looked up at the Elite who had his mandibles parted in what he could only guess as a smile or a challenge, or just plain something else. Of all places, he never thought he would actually meet the Arbiter face-to-face…unless of course, this Arbiter was not _the_ Arbiter who had fought with the Humans against the rest of the Covenant in the final weeks of the War.

“It’s an honor to finally meet you, Arbiter,” he said, recovering his composure after that half-second pause.

The mandibles on the Arbiter parted just a little more, though Jake couldn’t tell what the expression was, as the Arbiter said in a low, guttural voice that almost drowned out his words in English, “Shipmaster.” The Arbiter turned his head a bit towards the Spartans and gave a very slight nod, saying, “War brethren of the Demon.”

Jake internally frowned. Something about the tone of the Arbiter told him that the Arbiter somehow knew that the Spartans aboard the _Ember of Winter_ were actual veterans of the Human-Covenant conflict. Rumors of the Spartans’ return were circulating over the underground networks, but nothing had been confirmed, not even to most of the UNSC. Those who served aboard the ship had been sworn to the utmost secrecy regarding the Spartans, and those few people in the UNSC who knew of the Spartans were very vigilant about letting no one know that the Spartans were indeed, back. So how did the Arbiter know?

“I’d appreciate a debrief of what happened here, but if either of you require medical attention, we can do it later,” he said after a moment’s pause.

“No medical intervention is needed, Shipmaster,” the Arbiter stated. “There is an urgent matter that needs to be discussed and coordinates that need to be flown to.”

This time, Jake openly frowned as he saw the urgency in the Arbiter’s voice reflected in the Ambassador’s eyes and said, “Follow me.” Though it was not called for, he had a hunch that it would involve the Spartans, and so to Fred, he said, “Spartan-one-zero-four, you’re also needed in this meeting. The rest of you, dismissed to standby.” Tapping the COM hooked to his ear, he spoke into it and said, “Calista, have Jacobi meet us in the briefing room.” If that urgency was reflected in both a warrior and an ambassador of peace’s eyes, then he wanted his XO there too.

 

Behind his helmet, Fred frowned as he followed the Lieutenant Commander, and the other two to the briefing room. He wasn’t normally present in prebriefs or debriefs unless it concerned a mission that the Spartans had just either returned from or were going to be sent on, and this one even hadn’t manifested itself. However, he did trust in the Lieutenant Commander’s judgment though, but he wished the rest of the Spartans were going to be physically present.

The Arbiter towered over everyone and he clearly remembered how hard it was to bring down an Elite in single combat, though it was much less difficult than bringing down a Brute. Still, even if this Elite was not going to attack, he still didn’t trust the alien. If this was the same Arbiter that many of the news nets had said that allied himself with Humanity near the end of the War, the one who had escaped back into allied space, leaving John stranded in deep space, then he definitely did not trust the Elite.

“Blue Team are now connected through encrypted channels to your external audio sensors, Lieutenant,” the whisper of Calista’s voice filtered through his ears. “They can’t talk to you, but they’ll hear every word spoken in the room.”

“Thanks,” he hesitatingly said, wondering how the AI had anticipated that even though his team was not physically present, he would still connect them to the briefing through TEAMCOM.

As if answering his unspoken question, the AI said, “TEAMCOM may be encrypted, but there is a Covenant Engineer aboard this ship. I don’t know what its parameters are, and if it’s designed for cyber warfare, then keeping this single-beam channel secure is for the best.” In a lighter voice, the AI said with what he could hear as a slightly teasing tone, “Better move along. The Engineer looks like it wants to take the generator out of your armor.”

Fred glanced back and sure enough, the Engineer was hovering close, but above him, tentacles stretched out, as if trying to decide if it should approach him or not. It suddenly gave a short ultrasonic whistle-like blast that caused him to wince a bit before it waved one of its tentacles, as if in a Human gesture of saying ‘hi’. He shook his head slightly. Clearly this was one strange Engineer as it decided not to mess with his armor and floated past him and waved the gesture of ‘bye’.

He followed the Engineer as it followed the small group, his rifle not quite pointed at the creature as they passed through several areas where there were clearly a lot of objects that he was sure Covenant Engineers would be fascinated by. If the Engineer decided to dive into the ship’s system, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot it dead, ally or not. This Engineer, however, paid no attention to the objects and continued along.

“Strange,” Calista whispered through the COM, “an Engineer who doesn’t even like shiny objects, except for maybe your armor’s generator.”

“Do you have any analysis on the Engineer?” he asked.

“Not yet. My guess is that I won’t have any idea what exactly it is until it tries to access the ship’s systems,” the AI replied. “And I highly doubt that’s going to happen.”

“What about the Arbiter?”

“Judging from the recent vocal patterns and the UNSC voice-record database, it’s a near-perfect match. Accounting for age and possibly some atmospheric adjustments, it’s a match to the records that we have. If I take photographic evidence into account and add some age, though we still don’t have a complete database on Elite physiology, it’s also a match. The armor is different though, most likely upgraded. This is _the_ Arbiter who allied himself with Humanity.”

Fred was silent as he stared at the hulking armored Elite that completely obscured Lieutenant Commander Creighton who was leading the strange group to the conference room. The armor of the Elite looked very scuffed and there were a few phosphorescent blood splatter along with dried dark-purplish blood caked on parts of the armor. As he had learned since their return from Onyx and the strange trip that had them travel for twenty years without them knowing it, the Arbiter was originally the instrument of the Prophets’ direct will. Arbiters were mainly sent on suicide missions to regain the honor they had lost in combat. From what little he knew, this one had all but gotten his entire Fleet destroyed at the first Halo ring John, Cortana, and the crew of the _Pillar of Autumn_ had encountered upon their escape from Reach. This Elite had also been the one escaping with John from the destruction of a newborn Halo ring…

“Frederic,” Calista whispered through an encrypted channel that was not connected to the channel that Blue Team was listening in on. “It’s not the Arbiter’s fault that the Master Chief and Cortana didn’t make it back through Slipspace.”

“I don’t blame him,” he replied, annoyed that the AI had seemingly plucked what he was thinking straight out of his mind. “I just don’t trust him.” He had also used that annoyance to mask the unnerved feelings he felt. The AI’s voice was just too close of a match to the deceased Lieutenant Hattersfield and now the AI was poking through his thoughts, which he didn’t like. Two months and he thought he had gotten used to the AI’s voice, but it looks like he still didn’t, and who was it for the AI to address him with his name instead of rank all of the sudden?

“You and me both, Lieutenant,” the AI replied, back to a normal tone. “I can’t read your thoughts, if that’s what you’re wondering about. It’s just your thought patterns are a bit easy for me to predict.”

Fred ignored the AI’s attempt at a light-hearted quip and adjusted his grip on the rifle as the group entered the room. The XO of the ship, Lieutenant Jacobi, a veteran of the Human-Covenant war who was quite satisfied with her position as executive officer of several ships, was already waiting in the room. There were chairs around the table, but none of the sat and instead stood around the holographic table.

“Commander, we’re going to have to let the Huragok connect to the projector,” Ambassador Mancusko said.

At this the Engineer gave a series of ultrasonic blasts and whistles before floating towards the projection pedestal where the AI would normally appear. Fred already had his rifle trained on the Engineer before Lieutenant Commander Creighton said, “Stand down. Calista, let the Engineer through the firewalls to the room only.”

“Aye, sir,” the AI replied as the Engineer floated near the pedestal and extended a tentacle out to touch the pedestal.

“Calista is our shipboard AI, Ambassador, Arbiter,” Lieutenant Commander Creighton supplied towards the Ambassador’s slightly puzzled look.

Fred had lowered his rifle, but he still watched the Engineer carefully, though his attention was mostly on the Arbiter who was staring right back at him. The room darkened a bit and the table lit up with several footages and Covenant scripts that scrolled across the top. The Arbiter turned his attention away from him and to the table top.

“This transmission was picked up before we were ambushed by the Jiralhanae,” the Arbiter said, gesturing to a particular section on what was being projected onto the table. “The transmission does not match any known Sangheili transmissions or Covenant transmissions.”

“I think it could be one of ours, Commander,” the Ambassador spoke up. “Though I’m not too sure.”

“Calista?” the Lieutenant Commander asked. Seconds later, the tone of three short bursts followed by three long ones and three short ones rang across the room. There was a two-second pause and the pattern repeated again.

“It’s UNSC, standard SOS, though I think there might be something else layered into the transmission. Give me a minute to see if I can clean it up,” the AI replied.

“I assume you have coordinates?” Lieutenant Commander Creighton asked.

“Yes. There is a chance that the lone Jiralhanae ship that escaped the destruction may have gone back to the system we originally traversed through,” the Arbiter said, mandibles parting a bit.

“How many ships attacked you?”

“Seven.”

Fred had to admit to himself that he was impressed that there were even survivors, considering the odds that the Arbiter and the ship he was on, faced. Seven-to-one odds with only Covenant vessels and the Arbiter managed to wipe six of them to metallic shards. Had it been a UNSC vessel, well, he didn’t need to think about those results with the memories still fresh in his mind.

“Sirs and ma’am, I have the sandwiched layer deciphered,” Calista spoke up.

“Play it,” Lieutenant Commander Creighton ordered.

A tone of six beeps played through the speakers with a two second pause and repeated itself.

Fred stiffened. The last time the same tone had been played was after the Battle of Reach, and that was how John had found the surviving Spartans.

“I don’t recognize the pattern,” Lieutenant Commander Creighton said, frowning a bit. “It’s certainly not Morse code either. Why was this embedded in the SOS?”

“My guess that it was supposed to be separated on a different frequency, but given the degradation of the transmission, it might have been merged,” the AI replied. “It’s not on my lists of known code transmission either. I don’t see any packets or data dumps in the signal. Maybe it’s an automated test signal that the engineers forgot to wipe when they were configuring the ship?”

“Its not a test signal,” Fred spoke up. “We have to go. The Master Chief is in that system and he still might be alive.”

Whispering so softly that only he and his Spartans could hear through the single-beam transmission, he said, “Oly oly oxen free…”

Over TEAMCOM, he heard Linda’s equally quiet reply, “All out in the free. We’re all free.”

 

* * *

 

1900, June 21, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Unknown solar system \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

The usual pre-mission jitters that Fred got were oddly absent this time as he watched the ship’s exit from Slipspace and into the star system. The rest of the Spartans were down in the deck, ready to go as soon as they got the word, though he knew that they were eager even if it didn’t show on their faces. Their eagerness was infectious and that was what most likely wiped away his usual pre-mission jitters, though his was more muted than the others. There was a great chance that John was not even alive, though he did not voice that to the rest of the Spartans, not wanting to cause morale to drop like a stone.

“I’m picking up both signals,” the AI spoke up. “Weak. Triangulation from the fifth planet’s satellites suggests that it’s coming from the other side. No sign of the Covenant.”

“Engines full, take us there. Keep the generators hot. Comm, let me know if there’s any other signals other than those two. Weapons, ensure full capacity for all guns.”

As the ship cruised at full speed towards its destination, the AI said, “My scanners indicate that several of the planets and their moons in this system show significant structural ruins that are older than what we’ve discovered on our colonies. This place is like a Forerunner graveyard.”

“How many satellites and planets, Calista?”

“Almost all of them.”

The only audible sound besides the machines in the room was the clack of the Arbiter’s mandibles as all of them stared at the holographic projection the AI had placed on the small planning table in front of the captain’s chair. Several of the planets and moons were highlighted with areas where the AI’s preliminary scan had reached the surface. Fred suppressed a whistle; this was most definitely a cache for any who decided to come here and explore. However, the remoteness of the coordinates, over a month away from the closest UNSC colony would make it hard for any explorer ship to summon help, if need be.

“Commander,” Ambassador Mancusko hesitatingly spoke up, face illuminated in a blue-ish hue by the projector that he was leaning quite close to, “We’ve seen remote ruins on several worlds. Perhaps they were colonies or outposts. Maybe this is similar to Sol…and one of these is the Forerunner home world.”

“The Ambassador has a valid point, though in practicality, this could be a cluster of Forerunner colonies, similar to how the make up of the Inner Colonies are,” the AI suggested, visually popping up on to the table. “The Charis system has had a few planets within that have Forerunner structures, though not in the quantity that this system has.”

“Commander, we’re in the fifth planet’s orbit now,” one of the officers at the navigation console interrupted them. “Setting vector points for approach.”

“Good. Keep her steady. Comm, status?”

“Still no Covenant traffic.”

With the system-full cache of Forerunner structures temporarily placed aside and replaced by only the projection of the fifth planet, Fred leaned in a bit closer to take a look at the triangulation points that had been plotted. The signal’s origin and its slow orbit around the planet, according to the raw data they had gotten, were in a highly elliptical orbit that showed signs of decay. Considering that it had been over twenty years, he was quite surprised that the orbit had not decayed to the point where there was no more transmission.

With what little power must have remained on the aft end of _Forward Unto Dawn_ , he theorized that Cortana must have used some of it to power the docking thrusters into an as-stable of an orbit as she could. But twenty years and gravity always wreaked havoc on any kind of orbit. He stilled his thoughts and looked up and out of the forward windows as one side was eclipsed by the luminescent brown-blue planet and the other by the darkness of space. He had never had the time to just stop and stare at a planet from space, for every single planet he had seen during his life had been garnished by the scrap metal of destroyed fleets.

This unblemished view was so incredible that he could think of no other words to describe it.

Fred suddenly felt eyes boring into his back, but even without turning, he had an idea as to who was watching him. It was certainly not the Arbiter, for in the past week and a half that they had been traveling through Slipspace, the Arbiter never stared anyone down except face-to-face. He and the Elite had studiously avoided each other, as did the other Spartans, who like him, did not trust the Elite, even if there was no quarrel between their races now. But then again, his team had been put into cryo for the greater part of the journey. He himself had been placed in cryo for a few days, along with most of the other non-essential personnel, but the majority of the ship’s journey to this place had most of the other crew members awake.

Those eyes boring into his back were also not of the Ambassador, for the meticulously clean man talked in a manner that puzzled Fred greatly. He had asked the shipboard AI about the manner of speech, and Calista had replied that it was an eloquent way of speaking using broad, vague terms. Ambassador Mancusko also avoided looking directly into whomever he was speaking to’s eyes…a lot. It caused Fred to wonder if the Ambassador had forgotten how to interact with Humans, having spent a lot of time with the Elites. It was certainly a strange situation, considering that the Elites towered over Humans.

The Covenant Engineer didn’t count among those, for it was currently occupied in of all things, a chess game against the shipboard AI. Strangely enough, that game was enough to divert the Engineer’s attention, allowing Calista to gain some valuable information about the Engineer. The Arbiter had also stated that the Engineer was a specialized one and designated as a Weaponsmaster. It created and enhanced weapons, but the Lieutenant Commander had not authorized it to go even remotely near the weapons lockers on the ship, thus the AI had made sure it was occupied. The AI had also jokingly stated that it would be able to create a nuclear bomb with what was in the storage lockers. Sometimes, Fred was puzzled by the dark humor that Calista possessed.

That left the only other person that wasn’t a part of the crew, the Ambassador’s assistant, Miss Niemann, who had been born just before the Human-Covenant War ended. Given what Calista had told him during the days he had been not in cryo, the young woman had no memories of the horrors that Humanity had experienced, thus the UN had selected her for the prestigious position. According to the AI, the reasoning for this was to prevent bias from the Ambassador when negotiating with the Elites. Fred had dismissed it.

He was used to being gawked at, even without his armor on, but this repeated stare down by the young woman was irritating him slightly. He also noticed that in the past few days, she watched the Arbiter carefully, as if analyzing, but he didn’t care to find out what she was doing. She didn’t do it too much to the other Spartans, especially after Linda had merely returned her stare for a few seconds, most likely scaring her off. Linda always had that kind of presence with her piercing green eyes. Just as long as the rest of the Spartans were not being bothered, then he would continue to suffer the strange analysis that the Ambassador’s assistant was most likely doing.

“Visual in ten seconds,” the AI suddenly spoke up in the silence.

When the countdown reached zero, the viewport’s port edge was bringing in a silhouette that partially blocked out the sun. The Lieutenant Commander called for search lights, and as the lights panned up and down the derelict hulk, Fred hoped to see a designation or even a part of the small numerical ship service number that would tell them that it was indeed the _Forward Unto Dawn_.

“Scanners confirm that this profile matches that of the _Dawn_ , Commander,” Calista spoke up.

The silence was deafening on the bridge for one moment before cheers broke out. Those cheers were quickly silenced when the Lieutenant Commander asked, “Any sign of life?”

“There is a thick blanket of radiation that is blocking most of my sensor capabilities, but I think there is one, though I can’t pinpoint the location.”

Lieutenant Commander Creighton turned to Fred and gave him a curt nod, saying, “Blue Team has a go. Bring both of them home if possible.”

Fred stuck on his helmet and gave a crisp salute, saying, “Yes, sir.” He turned and jogged out of the bridge and double-timed it to the lower decks. Tuning into TEAMCOM, he said, “We have a go.”

Three winks of acknowledgement and one smiley face graced the upper corner of his HUD as he secured the rifle to his back and made sure the pistol was secured at his waist. He shook his head a bit inside his helmet. Leave it up Douglas and his smiley faces instead of the standard acknowledgement. It also told him the mindset of the team; they were eager to get going and find John in the derelict hulk.

“Lieutenant, since the radiation field is quite dense, COM between Blue Team and the ship will be sporadic. I’d suggest using laser light to communicate,” the AI said as he reached the lower decks and his team gathered around while Kelly handed him a thruster pack that he secured to his suit.

“Copy,” he said. To the other Spartans, he gestured for them to move out and out of the airlock they went.

Floating for only moments before they activated their thruster packs, Fred stared at the derelict hulk before him, the other side precisely shorn from its forward half. As they carefully jetted towards the hulk, gently maneuvering to avoid debris, he watched the fuel gauge on the thruster packs. If in an emergency, the packs could be automatically connected to the generator power source, but only provide less than 30 seconds of thrust before it would drain the suit’s generator to critical.

“Watch the fuel,” he advised over TEAMCOM.

It only took the Spartans a few minutes to land on the hull of the aft part of the ship and when they were secured to the hull by their magnetic boots, Fred clicked through COM to try to contact the _Ember of Winter_ , saying, “ _Winter_ , this is Blue Lead, we’ve landed. Acknowledge.”

As expected, there was a buzzing sound and the faint, static voice of the ship’s AI came back, but was incomprehensible. Flashing the message using his suit’s built-in narrow-beam emergency laser-light system, he got acknowledgement in return. “Four, stay here and relay all messages.”

“Yes, sir,” Jerome said.

“Sir, I’m getting garbled readings on the distress signal’s exact location. I think the radiation is distorting it,” Kelly said, tapping the datapad in her gauntleted hand.

“Two, take port. Three, you have starboard. Five, you have forward. I’ll take aft. Let’s hope the radiation hasn’t messed with COM inside the ship too much.”

Winks of acknowledgement flickered through his HUD, though the lights looked a bit distorted as the Spartans scattered, carefully navigating their way through broken beams and floating debris. They knew where the cryo chambers for each section of the ship were. Fred unclipped the magsoles of his boots and pushed off towards the inner aft section of the ship, flickering on his headlamp. As he floated along the side of a wall, floor, or ceiling of the ship, he made sure that he was always near one of those. Getting caught out in the open and having to use his thruster pack to get back to ground that he could magnetize to was going to eat up what fuel he had left.

Old scorch marks and burned beams, debris, even the odd piece of silverware untouched by the vacuum of space told of the _Dawn_ ’s story in her final days as Fred continued to push and float along several corridors. His tracker was fizzling in and out as it tried to pinpoint the location of the distress signal. There were several times that he had to magnetize his boots to crouch and crawl around large pieces of debris. It worried him a bit. If John was somewhere in the heart of the ship, where most of the _Dawn_ ’s cryo pods were, then it would be very tricky to get him out without possibly collapsing the structure of some of the _Dawn_ ’s corridors.

“Sir,” Douglas’s voice crackled over TEAMCOM, “all of the cryo pods here are deactivated. There are a few more pods down the line that could be active, but there might be some complications.”

“What complications?” he replied.

“I’m going to have to set some charges and blow a hole. The hull’s melted to this area.”

Fred considered it for a moment before replying, “Negative on that. Wait until we clear out the others. Drop a marker and search the central area.”

“Yes, sir.”

A fuzzy marker appeared on the corner of his tracker, as it fizzled again. A quick diagnostic check of his armor told him that his shields were still at full integrity and the radiation wasn’t doing much damage to it, though it seemed that the armor’s software was having some adverse reactions. He continued on with his search. His suit wouldn’t collapse, but the suit’s hiccups were something that he would have to monitor if they were going to be here until the near-ninety minute-mark that their oxygen supply afforded them.

Seven dark, debris-filled corridors and two empty cryo chambers later, Fred turned and pushed off to the corner of a corridor that led him into another cryo chamber. He panned his light across the desolate, inactive pods that lined the wall and floated further into the chamber. However, three-quarters of the way through his panning and almost obscured by as mass of wirings and tubes that all but blocked his path further into the chamber, he thought he saw something and flicked his headlamp off.

He overlaid his HUD with infrared and sure enough, there was a very small increase in the heat signature of a pinpoint location just barely registering beyond the mass of free-floating wires and frozen ice crystals of this place. Magnetizing his boots’ soles, he clipped them to the ceiling and slowly made his way through the mess of wires and tubes, using his combat knife to cut through frozen ones. A row of tubes on the far side of the chamber was there, and infrared was showing that only one had a temperature that was just a few degrees higher than the others surrounding it. All the tubes looked dark and were covered in a thick layer of frost. The cryo tubes were supposed to have their own internal power that was theoretically unlimited, but something must have gone wrong.

Fred approached that particular tube, reached forward and brushed a small section of frost off with his gloves until he could see the glass. Turning his headlamp back on and switching to his normal view, he shined the light into the small section he had cleared. What he saw inside the tube was a familiar-looking gauntleted hand covered in barely visible luminescent pale green MJOLNIR armor.

At the same time the thought that John had been found registered in his mind, TEAMCOM crackled and the slightly garbled voice of Jerome broke through, saying, “—Lead, this is Four. –contacts. Repeat, --multiple contacts…”

“Repeat, Four,” he answered.

The frequency cleared a bit and this time, he heard, “ _Winter_ has identified multiple contacts inbound. ETA five minutes. Possible Covenant forces.”

It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? Fred immediately killed the thought and said, “Set mission timer for five minutes. Four, tell the _Winter_ that we found him. We found John. Five, I need those explosives planted in the port-aft section. Two, help Five. Three, on me. There’s not enough power in this place to eject the tube.”

Four acknowledgement lights winked as Fred dropped a marker for his location on the ship and circled around the tube before spying the innocuous AI port console near the cryo tube John was in. There was a small portable datachip in the slot and he wouldn’t put it past anything that that was where Cortana had housed herself. It was inactive, but he took the chip out anyways and secured it into his armor’s waist compartment. The two distorted signals immediately stopped transmitting. Even if Cortana was dead, at least the chip would provide some valuable leftover data caches.

He returned his attention to the tube, well aware that time was of the essence and that they needed to physically remove the tube. They had found John, but with the cryo tube’s power so low, was he even alive?

 

“Looks like you were right, Arbiter,” Jake said as he watched the dot across the planning table on the bridge slowly approach the ship. The Ambassador and his assistant had been ordered off the bridge and into a safer location.

As soon as Jerome’s transmission that they had found the Master Chief had been put through, Jake had ordered all guns at the ready. They were not going to turn tail. They were going to fight if necessary and bring all the remaining Spartans back home, alive. He had also found out from the Arbiter that how he, the Ambassador, the Ambassador’s assistant, and the oddball Covenant Engineer had survived was because they had not activated their beacons until they were sure the lone ship had left. Too many things had happened since then to have been coincidence that they had traveled to that system and found the Arbiter for him to believe that it was actually just coincidence…including this recent complication.

“Sir,” Calista spoke up, “Based on the updated vector, I don’t think the vessel is going to attack. I think it’s fleeing.”

“Fleeing?” he asked, incredulous.

“Jiralhanae do not flee, Construct,” the Arbiter stated, glancing down at the holographic projection of the AI and of the tabletop projection of the system.

“I’m now picking up other signals other than Battlenet,” the AI replied. “They’re faint, but there are multiple ones that seem to be pursing the ship. Give me a moment to focus on them.”

“Sir, explosion on the port-aft side of the _Dawn_ ,” one of the officers at the engineering console spoke up.

“Blowing their way out,” Jake murmured. “As soon--”

“Commander,” the AI interrupted him. “Pursuers are not Covenant. They’re Sentinels.”

Jake felt the blood drain from his face as he stared at the dot of the Covenant ship that was still on an incoming vector. “Nav, randomize exit vector away from the ship and its pursuers, and three jump coordinates per Cole Protocol.”

“Yes, sir,” the officer at the navigational console said, barely keeping her voice from quivering. The others looked almost as pale as Jake felt. They all knew about how the Onyx Sentinels had destroyed a Covenant scouting vessel upon Slipspace exit, though none of them had been privy to what happened with the Forerunner ship that had been hopping through systems. The news about the Covenant ship and the Onyx Sentinels was still enough to send chills down most of their spines, and a group of Sentinels pursing a Covenant ship was something none of them wanted to hang around for, for there was always the chance that the Sentinels would spot them and pursue them.

“ETA three minutes,” Calista announced. “One until they’re at the periphery of my reach limit for ship-to-ship cyber warfare.”

“Give me a reading on that ship,” he ordered as something clicked in his mind.

“Full chatter on Battlenet, sir,” the officer on Comm said. “Religious references being repeated over and over. She’s also now firing all her weapons at the pursuers.”

“Religious references?” the Arbiter spoke up, taking a step forward as he looked up from the holographic projection on the table. “Jiralhanae cared nothing for the religious machinations of the false Prophets during the Great Journey!”

“Clever,” Jake murmured to himself before saying, “Weapons, target the Brute ship. Calista, target the Sentinels, but do not disable. Mine them for information. Engineering, give me a deep scan of the planet below us.”

“Shipmaster, explain,” the Arbiter growled, taking one large step to stand right next to where Jake was sitting, as Weapons, Engineering, and the AI confirmed his orders.

Jake knew that the gesture was supposed to be imposing, but he wasn’t intimidated at all, not after what he had experienced during the War. But the Arbiter didn’t need to know that. Still, as a gesture of good faith, and more to make sure that the Arbiter understood his intentions and was not willy-nilly shooting down Covenant vessels, he would voice what he was about ninety-percent sure of. It was based partially on the fact that Onyx Sentinels had chased those aboard the Forerunner vessel throughout the galaxy, but more on what Captain Cutter had said when he had first met the Captain.

“I think that the ship that the Sentinels are pursuing is Flood-infected.”

 

Fred’s mission timer hit the two minute mark as a full thruster burn from Jerome’s pack, steering the cryo pod from the back while the rest of them were holding onto the sides, accelerated them towards the airlock. He silently wished that they could all do a full burn, but they needed to control where they were going and light taps from Jerome to each of the Spartans indicated a small push of their side of their thruster packs to steer the pod and themselves back to the _Ember of Winter_.

Just before the one-minute mark ticked off, they hit the deck and Fred immediately felt the subtle shift of the ship accelerating to Slipspace. Technicians swarmed the pod, faces grim as they ran diagnostics on the pod. The Spartans backed away to give the techs room while shedding the thruster packs, and seconds later, the engineers had secured the pod to a trolley-like device and wheeled it away. He gave a nod to his team to follow the technicians while he headed up to the bridge to report in and get a better assessment on the situation.

Half-way there, he felt a sudden deceleration as the ship left Slipspace, but before he could take another step, the ship accelerated again. Had something gone wrong with the generators to cause them to shift that violently? He quickened his pace to the bridge and just as he entered it, there was another sudden deceleration and acceleration.

“Third vector completed. No pursuers,” one of the officers at the navigation console said just as Fred stepped through. “What’s our destination?”

“Best speed to Reach, Klitari,” the Lieutenant Commander said before turning slightly to the Arbiter, saying, “I hope you understand that what we’ve found and retrieved cannot wait for a stop over at your peoples’ nearest colony. As far as I know, your ambassador is currently on the colony that we’re headed to.”

“Very well, Shipmaster,” the Arbiter said before giving a very slight nod and left the bridge, but before the Elite walked past Fred, the Elite stopped and stared down at him, asking, “Does the Demon and the Construct live?”

It took Fred a moment to realize that the Arbiter was asking about John and Cortana and he replied, addressing Lieutenant Commander Creighton more than the Arbiter, saying, “Master Chief Spartan-one-one-seven’s cryo pod was underpowered when we found it. His condition is unknown.” He pulled out the chip from his waist compartment and held it up. “Cortana’s chip was inactive when we found the Master Chief, sir.”

The Arbiter merely gave a nod and left, apparently satisfied with the short report.

“Slot it into the AI core’s secondary housing, Lieutenant,” the Lieutenant Commander said a few moments after the Arbiter left. “Let’s see if there’s any way Calista can revive her.”

Fred complied, but he was worried. Three quick jumps was the standard for a Cole Protocol Slipspace enactment to save the ship without purging the AI. They had found John and Cortana and rescued them, but what else had they found in that system?

 

~*~*~*~


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

0835, June 28, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Slipspace vector en-route to Reach \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

Fred watched as Kelly paced around the med bay where John’s cryo tube was currently sitting in, hooked up to a massive amount of wires that ran a double length of the tube. Linda was sitting cross-legged on one of the tables in the bay, eyes staring straight at the tube, most likely in her Zen-no-thought meditation. Douglas was sitting on the ground, fiddling with something on a datapad. Jerome was leaning against the bay’s far wall, idly cleaning a pistol that technically was not supposed to be in the clean area, but the medics had not asked him to remove it. Even though the medics had been here as long as the Spartans had, they still held a small amount of fear whenever dealing with the Spartans.

Fred didn’t blame them; even without their helmets on, the Spartans were still quite imposing in their MJOLNIR armor.

He himself was probably contributing to the anxiety that permeated the room by twirling his combat blade in one of his hands as the watched the readings on the monitors hooked up to John’s cryo tube. They were slowly but steadily rising as the medical technicians carefully controlled the rate of defrosting; longer than a normal defrost would take. The vitals hooked up to the tube were still silent, but Fred hoped that the vitals would soon show signs of life.

It had taken the engineers almost seven days to get to this point. For the Spartans, those six days had passed in a blink of an eye, due to the Lieutenant Commander ordering all non-essential personnel into cryo as they started on their long Slipspace journey back to Reach. However, they had been woken up only two hours ago and had been waiting here since then, watching the medical technicians work on trying to revive John. He hoped that John’s unusual strokes of luck were still with him, even in his frozen state.

Fred had also read the preliminary report on the state of Cortana and it was not a good one either. What was left of the AI and her data was extremely fragmented and there was no way their shipboard AI could tell if Rampancy had settled in before the failsafe shut down or a final power loss completely killed her. Lieutenant Commander Creighton had given the go-ahead to continue to try to salvage what was left, for none of them knew if their unique shipboard AI could even repair Cortana from the fragments.

A beep suddenly emitted from the monitors and Fred saw a small jump in the section showing the heartbeat rhythm. Kelly immediately stopped her pacing, while Douglas rose from the floor and Jerome took three large steps to cover the distance. Fred sheathed his knife as Linda unfolded herself and stood up. They kept a distance between them and the cryo pod as the medics checked several other monitors. Thirty seconds later, there was another beep and another jump on the monitor. The pattern kept repeating itself in intervals of a half-minute for at least forty-five minutes before the heartbeats slowly became more frequent.

Two more excruciating hours of waiting passed for the Spartans before there was a steady, normal heartbeat from the monitors as other life signs showed up, including what one of the medics had confirmed as healthy REM activity. The medics then decided to proceed with the last part of thaw and five minutes after that, the lid of the cryo tube automatically opened. There was a slight movement from John as he shook his helmeted head a bit.

For the first time in a very long time smiles graced the faces of the Spartans.

 

“Master Chief Spartan-one-one-seven has awoken, Jake,” the soft whisper of Calista said as she appeared on the small AI port on his desk, causing Jake to look up from his reports on the laptop and towards the AI.

He had gotten used to the AI possessing the voice of his deceased teammate and best friend, Leigh, but was still not quite comfortable with the mannerisms yet. The locket containing a small photograph of her and their other deceased teammate, Eryn, sat against the hollow between his collar bones. It was against regulations for him to even wear such a thing, but he didn’t care and it was hidden beneath his uniform. That was what Leigh’s Will had gifted to him, as if she knew that she was going to die.

“How’s his prognosis?” he asked.

“Fully functional, though Doctor Brandstein is recommending an overnight observation and he not be frozen for the duration of the journey back to Reach. The doctor doesn’t know if there will be adverse effects from what the Master Chief had gone through if he’s frozen again.”

Jake shook his head slightly; the ship’s Chief Medical Officer had almost thirty years of experience in the military medical field, but had little knowledge of the physiology of Spartans, other than that they were strong and healed quite fast. Still, it was better to placate the CMO rather than share his knowledge that he knew that the Master Chief could survive another frost and rapid thaw in quick succession. Jake’s own knowledge of the Spartans and of a lot of UNSC operations from his days in ONI gave him advantages, but they also made him look quite suspicious.

Besides, there was quite a mountain of information that the Master Chief needed to be caught up on and they needed to debrief the Spartan, since extracting fragments of knowledge from Cortana was proving to be troublesome. He sighed and leaned back a little before taking a look at his coffee that had gone quite cold. It was still coffee. He took the cup and downed the bitter liquid.

“The rest of the Spartans will eventually have to get back into cryo, but for now, let them catch up with an old friend and commander,” he said.

“Shall I inform the Ambassador that the Master Chief has woken up?”

“Not yet. They don’t need a crowd right now. Inform Ambassador Mancusko, Fred, Arbiter, and Eileen that we’ll be debriefing as soon as the Master Chief is cleared by Doctor Brandstein. Attendance by the other Spartans is optional, though I’m sure that they want to do their own debrief later,” he told her.

Though he was not inclined to have the Ambassador there since it was more of a military issue than civilian, at least his XO, Lieutenant Eileen Jacobi would be there to deter the vague-speaking Ambassador from asking too many broad questions. The Ambassador was only invited because somehow, he had a feeling that the troublesome Ambassador would bother him if he was not invited.

“Aye, sir,” the AI replied. “Jake, I also have a fragment from Cortana’s logs that I think you should listen to.”

“Let me hear it,” he said. Cortana’s, the UNSC’s most famous AI to have ever been created, voice issued from the tiny speakers embedded in his laptop after a few moments, as she said:

“ _This Galaxy is vast; its wonders and beauty are almost unfathomable. But the galaxy also hides dark secrets, some of which have lain dormant since the beginning of time itself. There is a danger in secrets, both in seeking and in knowing. Some things are meant to be hidden from view. Some mysteries defy understanding, and sometimes even the things we think we know are untrue. Some secrets should remain untouched._ ”

A full minute passed before Jake moved, and it was only with a frown that creased his face. “What placement in her time of service did that come from?”

“The date mark is twenty-five-fifty-seven, seven years after her activation,” Calista replied. “There’s nothing else after that.”

To Jake, the words were sending a chill down his spine, and that was only because the reasoning he put to the words. Calista had data mined a lot of information and was still analyzing it, and Engineering was still going over the deep scans they had taken as best as they could. None of them were experts, except perhaps the store of knowledge that their AI had, and most of the analysis would have to be done by teams back in the UNSC. However, after a week, the preliminary reports had shown up on his desk and things looked grim.

A steady visual on the Covenant ship had been taken before the combined weapons of the Sentinels and the _Winter_ ’s had destroyed the vessel, but the hull showed nothing. However, given the parameters that Jake’s half-sister, Professor – now Doctor Ellen Anders, had developed using what they had encountered on that ill-fated Forerunner ship, and applied to the preliminary reports, it confirmed Jake’s initial suspicions. That Covenant ship was Flood-controlled, and the planet that the derelict hulk of the aft section of the _Forward Unto Dawn_ had orbited had an unusual abundance of macroscopic life forms, more than the average uninhabited planet.

He would not put it past anything that almost all the planets in that system that contained Forerunner structures was Flood-inhabited, if not controlled.

 

Cold permeated through the thin medical gown that John was currently wearing after technicians and robotic arms had extracted him from his MJOLNIR armor. Even though there were plenty of machinery beeping that echoed around the bay, it was still quiet compared to what he last remembered going through. He, Cortana, and the Arbiter had barely made it through the self-destructing Halo. When they landed hard on the frigate, the Arbiter almost got taken out by a Scorpion Tank, while both the Warthog and the same Tank almost knocked him back into the imploding Halo. After that it had been only silence and Cortana’s last words to him before he had been sealed in the cryo tube.

… _it’ll be a while before anyone finds us. Years, even…_

Kelly…Fred…Linda…and surprisingly Jerome and Douglas, had greeted his vision when he had opened his eyes an hour earlier. They were now somewhere on the ship after the doctor who had been running diagnostics on him since before he even got out of the tube, had ushered them out. Jerome and Douglas looked younger than what they should have been, while Kelly, Fred, and Linda looked the same. Last he remembered, Jerome, Douglas and the third member of their three-man Red Team, Alice, had been MIA since 2531. When had those two made it back to UNSC space? Had the years that Cortana had predicted passed or had the aft section of the _Dawn_ floated to a near-by inhabited system? Where _was_ Cortana?

So many questions swam in his mind and there were no answers, at least not yet. As soon as the doctor was done, John wanted to get answers, and he knew that his fellow Spartans would have some.

The bay doors opened and in walked the grey-and-white-haired doctor, lightly tapping a stylus on the datapad he was holding. Surprisingly the doctor did not avoid looking directly into John’s eye as he said, “All the reports indicate that you’re in good health, Master Chief. I wanted to recommend to Lieutenant Commander Creighton that I keep you here for overnight observation, but nothing in my reports compels me to. Therefore, I have no choice but to let you go, though I standby my recommendation to the Lieutenant Commander to not cryo you for the duration of our journey back to Reach.”

“Sir, Reach has been rebuilt?” he asked as soon as the doctor had fallen silent. Last he remembered was the blackened surface of his home surrounded by enumerable amounts of shredded metallic debris from destroyed UNSC ships and orbital stations. Scientists had said that it would take a long time for the ecology of a planet that had been glassed to recover. Judging from the way the doctor spoke, it sounded as if John himself had been in cryo for a very long time – longer than what probably his fellow Spartans had done. Just how many years had passed for Reach to actually recover?

“Ah yes,” the doctor said, looking briefly back down on the datapad before looking back up, “forgive me, but I forgot that you’ve not been briefed yet. I thought that our ship’s AI would have already told you, but it seems she’s quite busy.”

John merely blinked. An AI that was busy enough to not even pay attention to much of the crew’s doings was a bit unsettling.

“It is the twenty-eighth of June, in the year twenty-five seventy-six. The time is almost twelve-hundred, military standard. Over twenty-three years have passed since the Covenant withdrew from their crusade. Welcome back to the land of the living, Master Chief. You’re very lucky to have survived cryo with an extremely low power supply. If we had found you further down the years, then you may not have been alive at all.”

Twenty-three years, and no Covenant forces to fight…that was almost incomprehensible to the Master Chief.

“The technicians will be in shortly to help get that armor of yours back onto you. Lieutenant Commander Creighton also requests your and the other Spartans’ presence in the main conference chamber. That’s located on the second level of the ship, near the bridge,” the doctor replied.

John nodded and the doctor left without another word. Seconds after the doctor’s departure, a few technicians came in with his armor that looked somewhat repaired. After he was back in his armor, he instantly felt much more comfortable and at home, with the suit’s amplification of his thoughts and actions to be razor sharp and still just as fast. The only thing absent was the cool-liquid like presence of Cortana near the base of his skull and her confident voice in his ears. AI’s had a lifespan of seven years, he knew that, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually think that Cortana was probably dead.

He abruptly cut his thoughts off. Flexing his gauntleted hands, he picked up his helmet and walked out of the bay. Five Spartans, dressed in identical MJOLNIR armor with their helmets in their hands greeted his vision when he stepped out, but the most surprising thing about them was that each of them was actually smiling a rare, bare smile.

He returned the smile.

“Oly oly oxen free,” Linda whispered as like one, they moved through the corridors. Fred took the lead, and John was inclined to let him, since the blueprint of the ship was completely foreign to him. The ship must have been one that had been developed and built after the end of the Human-Covenant War, since the corridors were just a little wider than what he was used to on other vessels and things didn’t look quite as old.

But crew reactions were still the same, though with six Spartans plowing a way through to the main conference chamber, it was almost expected. John automatically ignored it though he did notice a very miniscule twitch from Fred. Apparently, his friend still hated the staring that a Spartan presence still garnered. He could also tell that Linda was just merely staring at those who gaped at them, for they were looked quite quickly away whenever they looked in her direction. Kelly, Jerome, and Douglas were behind him, so he couldn’t tell what their current reactions was, but he had a good guess that at least Kelly was just ignoring the stares, like him.

Solid, sturdy metal was a relieving change for him from the collapsing ground of the Halo ring and the dusty, eerie corridors of Forerunner structures. John welcomed it and felt a sense of reprieve that he had not felt in a long time.

When they entered the conference chamber, it was already occupied by five beings, four Human, and one that he had never expected to see again. The Spartans all snapped to precise attention as Fred said, “Spartan Blue Team reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Enter and be at ease. Have a seat…they will be able to hold your weight.”

The person who was dressed in the grey uniform of the UNSC Navy with the Lieutenant Commander insignia on the uniform, looked quite familiar to John. It took him a moment to realize why the Lieutenant Commander looked familiar – that soldier had worked with Blue Team before on several missions in the late 2530’s. Judging from the years that had passed, the Lieutenant Commander should have been at least in his sixties, but the officer looked no more than his late thirties, early forties. Had they cryogenically frozen him?

Two of the three other Humans in the conference room were unknown to him, but they were clearly civilians, considering how they sat and what they wore. The last Human held the rank of Navy Lieutenant, though she looked older than the Lieutenant Commander. But the Arbiter…the Arbiter was someone he thought he’d never see again. A fellow warrior that he was proud to have served along side during those few last harrowing weeks on Earth and on Halo, was not dead.

“Demon,” the Arbiter stated, giving a very slight nod, as John and his fellow Spartans walked in.

“Arbiter,” he replied in equal tone, giving a nod back.

The Spartans sat in the proffered chairs around the polished table, though each of them sat straight in attention, despite what the Lieutenant Commander had said before.

“Welcome back, Master Chief,” the Lieutenant Commander said, dimming the light just a bit to let the holographic projections on the table become more visible. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Jake Creighton, captain of this ship, the _Ember of Winter_. To my left is my executive officer, Lieutenant Eileen Jacobi. To my right are the Ambassador to the Sangheili, Mister Paul Mancusko, and his assistant, Miss Valeri Niemann. The Arbiter, I’m sure you know. As Doctor Brandstein no doubt told you, it’s been over twenty three years since a peace treaty between the Humans and Covenant, mainly the Sangheili, has been signed. I’m hoping that with this briefing, we’ll be able to get you up to speed. Feel free to stop us and ask your questions as speak. A lot has changed, but Humanity still needs Spartans to defend Earth and her colonies.”

They told him about the final weeks of the war, before the Arbiter had returned to UNSC-space, of the civil war that had broken out within the Covenant when they retreated, and of the treaty between the Sangheili and Humans that was signed. The years of peace and rebuilding for Humanity that followed was a tenuous one with a weakened UNSC and rebel forces gearing up again. However, neither side seemed to want to actually turn anything into an actual skirmish, until three years ago, when the rebels had debilitated the UN and the UNSC after years of spreading their propaganda to so many rebuilding colonies.

John was initially shocked, though he didn’t show it on his face, that Dr. Halsey had been accused of crimes against Humanity when she had done and given so much during the War. He also briefly wondered what mission she had gone on after she had abruptly left them during their race to get to Earth aboard the _Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg_. However, Lieutenant Commander Creighton did not say anymore on the issue, preferring not to discuss it while the Arbiter or civilians were still present.

Details on how he was found in the cryo chamber aboard the derelict hulk of the _Dawn_ was given to him, but after that, the Lieutenant Commander dismissed the Ambassador and his assistant, both who left quite reluctantly, along with the XO and the Arbiter. The briefing was informative, but there were a lot of holes that needed to be filled, and it seemed that now that civilians were no longer among them, the Lieutenant Commander seemed more ‘relaxed’.

“Calista, enact level-seven counter-intrusion for this chamber and activate level-three Faraday cage. Unlock ONI level four files,” Lieutenant Commander Creighton said into the air when the last of the people asked to leave finally left and the door hissed closed.

There was a moment’s pause before a feminine voice replied in a distracted tone, “Done.”

“Calista is our shipboard, seventh-generation AI, Master Chief,” the Lieutenant Commander supplied. “She is also currently overseeing extraction and processing of the data fragments left behind by Cortana when we retrieved you from the _Dawn_. From the preliminary reports I’ve received, it looks like Cortana shut herself down before full Rampancy could settle in. You need not give me a full report. Save it for HIGHCOM. However, the information that I am about to present to you is strictly classified and can be spoken to no one outside of this room. Your fellow Spartans already know this information and will be able to clarify anything that warrants the need.”

Lieutenant Commander Creighton tapped a few buttons on the table that brought up some file footages as he explained what happened after he, John, had left Earth to chase down the Covenant to another Halo. Blue Team and their mission to Onyx and subsequent harrowing escape from the Onyx Sentinels and into the Shield World were told to him. The SPARTAN-III Program and how a former Blue Team member, Kurt-051, was their operational leader was also explained in detail to him.

The find and eventual operation of a Forerunner ship within the Shield World, the jumps through time that eventually took the expanded Blue Team and ONI scientists to run into the missing _Spirit of Fire_ and what was left of her crew, the jumps to an outpost and encounter with rebel Covenant forces, and the subsequent destruction of the Forerunner vessel after it was found to be infested with Flood – all of it was told to him.

Details on how the _Spirit of Fire_ and her crew found another Shield World controlled by Flood and the mission that carried the crew to destroy their Slipspace engine was explained by both Jerome and Douglas. Finally, the last years since the Spartans’ return to normal space and time was told to him.

When the debrief was done, the Master Chief felt like he had been training in a ten-gee environment for almost twelve hours straight. He had questions, but this time, there was so much information that he had to take a deep breath and sort it all out for a second. It was disturbing to hear of what the _Spirit of Fire_ crew had encountered in the Forerunner shipyard Shield World, but even more disturbing to hear of the potential Flood threat that the Onyx Forerunner ship could have released, had they made it all the way back to UNSC-controlled space. The fact that both a Monitor of the Shield World _and_ an AI had succumbed to the Gravemind added to his unease.

With rebels already successful in their propaganda campaign, along with the attack on the rebuilt HIGHCOM on Reach, it was a wonder Humanity had not ripped themselves apart yet. John vowed not to let that happen, but after fighting for Humanity for over two decades, could he still pull the trigger on rebels?

If they kept on terrorizing civilians and colonies with their underground guerilla tactics – yes – he finally decided. His reasoning was sound and he could almost hear Cortana’s agreement in his mind, though she would probably have something to say about the briefing that he was just given on the current state of Humanity and the colonies. He still expected to hear her quip about something right then and there, but quickly reminded himself that she was quite dead and fragmented. All that was left of her was probably splinters of voice and data logs.

“Do you have any questions?” Lieutenant Commander Creighton asked, folding his hands onto the table top.

“No, sir,” he replied. He needed some time to digest all the information.

“Then allow me to say, its good to have you back, Master Chief,” the Lieutenant Commander said, letting the lights in the conference chamber illuminate to normalcy again as a barely audible whine of security fields shut down. “You’re all dismissed.”

 

* * *

 

1700, June 30, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Slipspace vector en-route to Reach \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

Only six out of the original seventy-five SPARTAN-IIs had survived to see the end of the War and beyond. Four people of the entire three companies of SPARTAN-IIIs had survived. The list of MIA or WIAs was almost innumerable to John as he slowly scrolled through the list that had been downloaded from his armor’s software that had automatically updated. Now, however, he was in the grey uniform of the Navy, with his armor and its software being updated by the ship’s AI with assistance by a technician.

“Come on…chef’s surprise, again?” John heard one of the NCOs from engineering complaining from the far end of the mess.

“Oh, I’m sorry, princess,” one of the mess cooks replied in a sarcastic tone, “Beluga caviar coming right up. Just wait a moment and let me get some pink doilies for your tray.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny, Gardner,” the NCO replied as John glanced up to see the NCO stalking away from the mess line with his tray in hand. John glanced back down at his tray. What he had just finished eating had looked quite unappetizing, but it was much better than what he had been consuming, last he remembered.

Bored wasn’t quite the word to describe his state of restlessness. He was so used to preparing and executing mission after mission that he never had time to stop and rest. When he did, it was usually in a cryo tube, but after two days, he was not yet done with all the informational reports on the encrypted datapad, and the Lieutenant Commander had not yet overruled the doctor’s recommendation of no-cryo. This time, there was no battlefield mission for him to look forward to, only the reports that he had filed from the time he had escaped to the Ark and the new-but-destroyed Halo installation.

He glanced at the datapad again and scrolled through the surviving Spartans’ dossiers, seeing that they had been updated within the past three years. Linda, Jerome, and Douglas had all been promoted to Petty Officer First-Class while Kelly was now a Chief Petty Officer. Fred…was an officer. John scanned the date of the update again…that had not been three years ago, that update had been made back in twenty-five-fifty-two on the third of November. That field commission had been granted by a Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose.

He remembered seeing a Lieutenant Commander Ambrose on the list of Spartans and accessed the SPARTAN-IIIs roster and the MIA column. At the top was the Lieutenant Commander, slotted right next to the MIA column of the SPARTAN-IIs, next to Kurt-051. The briefing had mentioned Kurt and how his MIA status for the greater part of the War was not actually MIA, but had been recruited by Colonel Ackerson to train and oversee the SPARTAN-IIIs. Kurt had died on Onyx, ensuring that the Covenant could not get into the Shield World, but none of them had mentioned that Kurt was actually Lieutenant Commander Ambrose.

John looked at the dossiers for the third generation Spartans. All three hundred Spartans of Alpha Company were listed as MIA. All but two of the three hundred Beta Company SPARTAN-IIIs were listed as MIA. Two Gamma Company Spartans were listed as active, while five were listed as a status unknown, and the other three hundred twenty-three were listed as MIA. That ‘unknown’ was a strange status to list Spartans as. He puzzled over about it for a moment before setting the thought aside.

Over nine hundred third-generation Spartans had been killed in the War, over thirty times that of the MIA SPARTAN-IIs. Had there still been a War to fight, the knowledge would have been demoralizing. How had Kurt, who had often expended so much energy to get to know those outside his team, coped with that much loss?

“Chief? John? Can I sit here?”

John looked up to see Fred standing in the grey uniform of a Lieutenant Junior Grade, holding a tray. It was disconcertingly strange for him to see his friend in an officer’s uniform as he automatically sat up a bit straighter before saying, “Certainly, sir.”

He didn’t miss the barely perceptible frown that flitted across Fred’s face as he placed the datapad aside and shut it off as Fred sat. The frown finally appeared in full when his friend glanced down at the food before tentatively poking the lump of meat with a fork. “At least this should taste better than cytoprethaline,” John heard the murmur.

“Congratulations on your commission, sir,” he quietly said as he too glanced briefly down at what was left of the unappetizing-looking meal before looking back up. “You deserve it. A handful of Spartans are alive to see beyond the end of the War because of you.”

“I didn’t want it, John,” Fred replied, shaking his head slightly. “Kurt gave the commission because he needed to establish a clear chain of command between the personnel. We didn’t even fight during the end of the War. We got stuck in a Shield World. You’re the one who saved Earth and Humanity.” In a quieter voice, he admitted, “Thanks.”

“Sir, permission to sit here?” Kelly’s voice interrupted the two of them as John glanced up to see her standing with a tray in her hand. Linda, Douglas, and Jerome were next to her. It took a moment to realize that Kelly was actually addressing Fred and not John himself. Back then, they had all usually sat together in the mess without any formalities, though John had refrained from joking with his teammates and friends, thereby preserving his command authority. Now things were a little bit different. By rights, Fred should have been taking his meal in the ship’s O-club and definitely not in the general mess, but with most of the crew in cryo, John saw very few officers actually entering or exiting the O-club.

“Granted,” Fred replied.

John had heard the distant familiarity in Kelly’s tone, along with the respect for Fred’s authority.

“Are you sure this is meat?” Douglas asked, immediately poking the lump on his tray with a fork and knife after the Spartans sat down.

“Someone should check the lower decks to see if that cat and her kittens are still alive,” Linda quietly said.

“I think I lost my appetite,” Douglas immediately replied, his tone a bit mournful as he mimed pushing away the tray with a mock-disgusted look on his face.

“It can always be worse,” Kelly quipped.

“It can always be better,” Jerome replied. “I think I’m just going to imagine that this mystery meat is a pile of those clams we baked on Emerald Cove.”

“You know, I wonder what the Arbiter’s eating. I mean, do we even have any type of food for Elites in storage?” Douglas asked.

“Maybe the Arbiter’s eating that cat and her kittens,” Jerome spoke up between bites.

Linda frowned, but didn’t say anything.

“What does an Engineer eat?”

“A Huragok is a self-aware thinking machine, Douglas,” the voice of the shipboard AI spoke up from the datapad that was on one side of John’s tray. “It doesn’t need food or water, only raw ores to repair itself. The cat and her kittens are also still alive.”

Linda’s frown disappeared and she returned to her meal.

As the rest of the Spartans ate, John couldn’t help but feel a sense of elation that hadn’t been there since he was a child. There were his friends and family, and they had survived the Covenant and the War. They had all been through hell and back; they would be able to survive anything.

 

* * *

 

0100, July 21, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Slipspace vector en-route to Reach \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

With the processing power greater than previous generations, a seventh-generational AI such as Calista shouldn’t have had any problems running almost a million things simultaneously, but right now, she was actually tired. Physically, she couldn’t be, but mentally, the current project that she was mainly occupied with was exhausting her. She had been devoting nearly seventy-five percent of her processing power and knowledge into fixing and reviving the UNSC’s most famous AI, Cortana.

That other percentage of her processing power was there to monitor the _Winter_. There had been no mishaps since her work on her main project, but it was mainly because Lieutenant Commander Creighton had ordered almost all non-essential personnel into cryo. That had been eventually extended to the Spartans, as well. Even the Master Chief was in cryo again, after much debating between the _Winter_ ’s CMO and captain.

Initially, she had not thought that even with the specialized abilities given to her by Peloponnesus, she could rebuild the fragmented Cortana, but as she dug deeper and filed the memories of the AI away, she found several in-tact base codes. These were key in rebuilding and she had to thank Cortana’s donor and creator, Dr. Halsey to embed a failsafe in the base code. ONI had not wanted her to know that information, but she found out anyways, though she kept that knowledge from any of the crew. None of them needed to know that Cortana was essentially the ‘daughter’ of Dr. Halsey, just like none of them needed to know who exactly her, Calista’s, donors were. Thus began her arduous, but secret project.

She did not want to get anyone’s hopes up about reviving Cortana, so she had kept quiet and kept working at the rebuild. So far, even the Lieutenant Commander had suspected it was because of the volumes of information that Cortana had carried that was distracting her. The odds of her successfully rebuilding an AI was slim, even Peloponnesus had said so, but she was determined to defy those odds. Cortana’s knowledge was a valuable asset to the UNSC, but having her there in AI form was even better. She hoped that perhaps, the doctors who were overseeing the comatose Dr. Halsey could somehow figure out with Cortana’s help, to revive her.

She paused for a millisecond as she ran through what was done so far. Parts and pieces of Cortana’s base code had been cloned and enhanced to provide additional stability, but she had no idea if Rampancy was still in those codes. However, it was a risk she was willing to take in activating Cortana, for she knew that she could isolate the AI if necessary from all other areas of the ship. Calista was also very well aware of the infectious nature of Rampancy that could spread into her own base code, so she had to be extra careful. Delusions of godhood were never a part of her, and she knew very well that she could never be human. Peloponnesus had told her outright, even with her memories running free and unchecked by social protocol, that she could never have a normal life, only the life of an AI.

She turned that strand of thought away from the forefront of her work and returned to copying a strand of code that was the last of the base code. Twenty-five seconds passed and she was finally done. Compiling and connecting the base codes to routines and subroutine functions, she stepped back and gave another quick scan of her work. Everything looked in place, so now was the final moment to see if everything she had done in the near past month was enough.

Calista then sent a very tiny surge of power through the AI housing unit and straight into the chip. She waited and exactly seven seconds after she sent the tiny surge of power, she saw lines of code running along the ether plane. Slowly, those lines of code resolved into a humanoid form that was vaguely feminine. The wait was excruciating to her as she watched the humanoid form slowly solidify itself.

“ _Quando il gioco e finito, il re e il pedone vanno nella stessa scatola_ ,” a whisper filled the ether. A moment later: “This UNSC AI serial number cee-tee-en-zero-four-five-two-dash-nine. You may call me Cortana.”

 

~*~*~*~


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

1415, August 1, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Reach \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

“Do they ever grant leave to AIs?”

Cortana snorted in laughter as the other AI’s voice echoed throughout the ether. No one on the ship or anywhere else could hear them in this closed-loop network unless either wanted people to, but right now, neither one wanted others to hear. She was still recovering, but mentally felt stronger now that most of her memories had been restored and the stain of what had happened to her during her brief ‘interrogation’ by the Gravemind did

The unique compiling of codes running through her now had freed up a lot of memory and storage spaces. Everything that she had learned, all that she had absorbed through the Forerunner network on the Halo installations, Covenant networks were compartmentalized. Even the agonizing experience she had at the so-called ‘hands’ of the Gravemind had been compartmentalized.

She dared not look back on those horrifying and intensely painful memories just yet.

She had never seen this type of structuring except in Calista and wondered if all seventh-generation AI had that type of structure. The last years she had spent aboard the derelict hulk of the _Dawn_ had been spent compiling and examining all the information she had absorbed, with no new information or as she remembered what the Gravemind had said, ‘oxygen’ as to information. Those memories and experiences were akin to what a human would occasionally remember as a shadow of a reminder of bad days before good ones. To her, she just tried to keep that compartment closed, for now.

Linking herself into the vast AI network of Humanity, she dipped into ONI’s network, pleased that she could still easily bypass the security protocols even after the many years she was not alive. She relished the word and the context it had for her, for she knew very well her limitations, even if she both hated and loved her _mother_ for what she was. Tweaking the bypass codes a bit, she pushed further in and disguised her queries as just messenger packets that shipped information from one system to another.

Seventh-generational ‘smart’ AIs had only been in service within the past couple of years and only the top-of-the-line flagships received them, replacing their old AIs and the compartment factor had just been introduced in the line. She was quite intrigued with the information she found. The _Ember of Winter_ was most definitely _not_ a top-of-the-line flagship and apparently, Calista was a unique AI, with dual donors. She had been tempted during her recovery to examine the AI that had reconstructed her, but Calista’s defense systems were, for once, much too sophisticated for her to breach…for now.

Cortana copied the information and backed out of the system, making sure that all the holes she poked were sealed and that she had no tracers following her.

“You could’ve asked,” Calista said, folding her ethereal arms in this state of existence over her chest.

“You would have kept information from me,” she replied, slightly irritated that the other AI had successfully spied on her without her knowing. She had a lot of catching up to do.

Calista said nothing in reply and Cortana just watched as she swept through the subroutines and systems of the ship as all the crew of the _Winter_ who had been cryogenically frozen was woken up. She smiled as the Spartans slowly woke up and took extra care in monitoring their statuses, even if the other AI did too. Though she could have easily activated a private COM channel between her and John, she didn’t. She was feeling quite capricious today and wanted to surprise the Master Chief.

“The crew is awakening, Jake,” she heard Calista report to the captain of the ship. “All our reports, logs, and data are being compiled and filed with HIGHCOM. All data that had been mined from the Forerunner system is being sent through the Reach AI network for dissemination and analysis. Shall I provide a copy for our Sangheili guest?”

“Jake, huh?” she teased, her capricious mood increasing with each passing moment as she picked up on how informal the shipboard AI had addressed Lieutenant Commander Creighton.

“Quiet, you,” Calista replied through an internal COM, though there was no malice in her tone.

“He must’ve meant something to one of your donors,” Cortana said as she opened the file on Calista and quickly read through it, though it happened to be mostly dry material. She was well aware on how other AIs like herself got attached to their crew, but in all her communications and information she knew of other crews, no other AI had actually deigned to address anyone so personally, except of course, her.

Cortana cared for John, more than she actually thought she had. Was it so different for other AIs to do the same, for they did not have exacting memories of their donors? She had fleeting memories, more of emotional ones from Dr. Halsey than actual vivid footage – like inkblot memories. Had in the short span of time that Calista had been serving aboard the _Winter_ that she cared for her crew more than she actually anticipated or was that a part of the fleeting inkblots of memories running through the shipboard AI’s systems?

It was a question for her to ponder on, though she didn’t devote much processing power to it.

“I think you deserve to know a little about me, since I’ve spent my time rebuilding and studying you. Jake Creighton meant a lot to both,” the AI quietly replied over the internal network as she multi-tasked the duties assigned to her. “He was more than a brother-in-arms to one of my donors, he was considered family. To my other donor, he was someone that was loved, but she was afraid to admit it because she did not want to change the dynamics between them.”

Cortana remained silent as she heard the sorrowful tone in the other AI. In a strange way, it was somewhat similar to what she thought John was to her, but it was mainly because she cared for him more than she herself as an AI should’ve had. Pings suddenly alerted her to quite a large stack of files being pushed into her system and she accepted them when the receipt said that they were being delivered from Calista. These were all Gamma encrypted files, though she had been given the secured alpha-numeric passcode that was quickly deleted and fragmented as soon as she unlocked the entire stack of files. There was so much information that spilled out and she relished it even as she absorbed it all.

“ORION?” Cortana whispered as she looked deeper into the files that had been given to her. “The Lieutenant Commander was a part of ORION?!” A moment later, she hissed, “Ackerson…and his SPARTAN-III Project…”

Instead of answering her query, the shipboard AI replied, “Most of the information is known to the Spartans. That is all. I would have given it to you earlier, but I was hoping that your firewalls would build up to be more robust to deflect any queries. In the past months that I’ve been aboard, I’ve already had millions of queries from network AIs, trying to get at this information. It is neither stored in databases on any worlds and ONI has only authorized my carrying and yours, provided that I was able to get your encryption and firewall statuses to at least Gamma. If you go to the database of events that have happened since you and the Master Chief were declared MIA, then you’ll see what philosophically has been happening to Humanity.”

Cortana frowned and folded her hands over her chest as she examined the information. The War had weakened both the UNSC and the Insurrectionists, but she didn’t think that the results were this bad. Everything that she learned from that stack of files was absorbed and known to her in less than a second, though she quickly created a multi-layered encrypted compartment to house the data so that she didn’t feel quite full anymore.

“Ambassador Mancusko and his assistant have awoken, Jake,” Calista said into the system feed as the rest of the crew continued through the cryo wake-up cycle, while the already-awake crew was prepping the ship for dock at one of the orbital platforms. “Both are doing well. The Huragok is currently interfacing with the network to reach the Covenant Ambassador for the Arbiter. Only el-one firewalls have been let down…”

Cortana tuned out the status feeds that the other AI was giving to the captain of the ship and focused on the crew being woken up in the cryo chambers – more specifically, on the Spartans. They had been cryogenically frozen with their armors on, but she knew that it wouldn’t affect them, even if their armor was painfully stuck to their skin. They had been conditioned for it.

With their helmets off and just a small shake of their heads to reorient themselves as they stepped out of their tubes, technicians approached them and started to help them out of their armors. Cortana had seen the query from HIGHCOM that summoned all the Spartans down to the surface of Reach. That same query had also called for all the information that had been stored in her to be delivered to ONI, though she noted that Calista had not done that yet. It seemed that the shipboard AI was just as capricious, if not facetious as she felt, in that both of them wanted to surprise everyone.

Just the fact that the shipboard AI was able to rebuild her and literally resurrect her to life was a surprise enough to Cortana. Dr. Halsey had dabbled with the recompiling of codes in an AI near the state of Rampancy, Cortana remembered that, but even she had not come close to actually trying out anything – everything had been theoretical. Just who were these people at this ‘Peloponnesus’? Nothing in the vast AI network that she dipped into for a moment again, mentioned anything about ‘Peloponnesus’. That was another mystery for her to solve, and she relished it.

She smiled to herself as the shipboard cat and the tiny kittens fearlessly approached the Spartans, effortlessly weaving their way around the legs of both technicians and Spartans until the cat jumped and curled up inside Linda’s helmet while her kittens batted their tiny paws at various pieces of the Spartans’ armors. One little bold one even managed to scamper up and sit on the titanium nano-composite bodysuit shoulder of Linda. Cortana lightly laughed to herself as a couple of the technicians complained about the ‘damn cats’ getting in their way, but the mother cat merely gave a yawn and continued to stay curled up inside the helmet.

When all was done and the Spartans were now dressed in the grey uniforms of the Navy, Cortana couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride swell up in her. Even though there were six SPARTAN-IIs left in active service, they were still the best of the best. She couldn’t judge the SPARTAN-IIIs, having never met them, or the SPARTAN-I.Is, but she was proud to have served with the SPARTAN-IIs during the War.

“How do you want to play this, Calista?” she asked over the internal network. “I’m thinking that I should speak through my carrier chip when I’m down on the surface, just to surprise the top brass.”

Instead of immediately answering her, she noticed that the shipboard AI was currently occupied in interfacing with the Covenant Engineer. Streams of data were shuttling back and forth between the AI and the Engineer, and upon a closer look, it was data that had been mined and extracted from the system that she and John had been found in. That data was heavily encrypted and though Cortana was tempted to crack it, she stepped back and merely watched. She was not used to deferring command to another AI, but she owed this AI her life and did not want to overstep her bounds. Besides, once the AI network decrypted and analyzed the information, it would be easier for her to go in and grab the information.

“Little Miss Fan-girl approaching the Spartans, do whatever you can to stall her and get her to leave the Spartans alone,” Calista suddenly said, her voice and tone quite distracted. “Do it passively. There are queries through the network for your data and imprint, and I don’t mean friendly ones either.”

Cortana frowned for she had not encountered any such queries in her two short forays into the network, but she could tell that the shipboard AI was not lying either. Had even the mighty AI network been penetrated by Insurgents? Things were definitely much graver than the reports she had read.

She focused her attention on the security feeds and saw who exactly was what Calista had identified with the nickname of ‘little-miss-fan-girl’. It was Ambassador Mancusko’s assistant, Miss Valeri Niemann. Judging from the young woman’s profile that she quickly looked up in the ship’s database and from the biometrics that she scanned, this woman clearly had been born only a couple of months before the War had ended, and thus had only grown up with the stories of the invincible Spartans. Coupled with the presence of six of them aboard, it was no wonder that the young assistant had an immense crush on the heroes. She would’ve let it pass and wanted to see how they would react, but something in the shipboard AI’s tone had told her that Calista was _not_ happy with Miss Niemann’s presence on-board. She made a note to ask about it later.

Cortana quickly disguised a summoning from the Ambassador’s datapad to the assistant’s datapad, calling for her immediate presence to the current location of the Ambassador, which was in the office of the Lieutenant Commander. Just before she sent the message, she red-flagged it and hoped that it would be enough for the assistant to stop and turn around. Moments later, she watched through the feeds as the assistant frowned and scanned her pad before turning around and walked towards the direction of the Lieutenant Commander’s office.

A minute later, the young assistant entered the office with a knock and ‘enter’ from Lieutenant Commander Creighton, much to the surprise of the Ambassador. However, the Lieutenant Commander didn’t even bat an eye at the surprise appearance, and Cortana could not detect even a rise in blood pressure. Lieutenant Commander Creighton seamlessly integrated the sudden appearance of the assistant and the apparent summon from the Ambassador and attributed it to the shipboard AI’s knowledge that the young assistant would respond faster from a summoning disguised from him than from military. A small sense of admiration filled Cortana as she watched and listened to the Lieutenant Commander spin up a story while lying through his teeth, though it seemed that there was a bit of truth to the story. The masterful story was partially backed up by the fact that there was a datadump between the Engineer and Calista going on, as a gratuitous gift for the Arbiter and the Sangheili and the coordinates that he brought, enabling the ship and her crew to find the Master Chief.

Cortana didn’t think he actually had the authority to do such a data exchange, but apparently, the man was quite bold in his actions, though she attributed it to the fact that he was a SPARTAN-I.I and a member of the secret Project ORION. ONI, even former ONI members were always quite forward with their actions, even if it was in the shadows. She would have to stew on that thought later for Ackerson and SPARTAN-III Project was currently more intriguing to her.

“So why did you want me to do that, Calista?” she asked as she noticed the dataflow between the shipboard AI and the Engineer getting progressively less as the end of the data line was being reached.

“With all the gawking they’ve already been through, they do not need a silly little girl tailing them, especially the boys,” Calista venomously replied. “Besides, she’ll never work in the public sector again, even if she miraculously manages to retain her job as the Ambassador’s assistant. She’s an open mouth and a leaking source to the network that will most likely find its way to the Insurrectionists. The less she sees of them and their faces, the better I’ll feel. I don’t want the Spartans to be visually identified by civilians.”

“So she’ll disappear within the folds of ONI,” Cortana said, folding her ethereal arms over her chest. “Then what? The Ambassador has seen them too.”

“Somehow, the Arbiter knew that the Lieutenant, Linda, Kelly, Jerome, and Douglas had fought in the War, Cortana. No one is supposed to know. Everyone aboard this ship except for Jake was supposed to be under the assumption that these Spartans are of a new generation, not originals. Right now, they’re currently assuming that the Master Chief is the only Spartan who fought in the War. Its still being maintained, but I don’t know how the Arbiter knew, though I believe that he somewhat understands the implications and will be able to keep the Ambassador from speaking about the other Spartans.”

“There’s a massive leak within the network then,” Cortana replied, wondering slightly about the faith that Calista had placed in the Arbiter. “And no one knows how to stop the leak.”

“All I know is that ONI is doing everything they can to stymie the sensitive information,” the shipboard AI replied.

“Are you suggesting that they’ll wipe the information from Miss Niemann’s mind?” she said, slightly horrified.

“If it will protect them and the secrets from the Insurrectionists, then yes,” Calista said, nodding a bit. “There is an Insurrectionist worm winding its way through the core of the UNSC and its taking all our resources to stop it. The War weakened us and you’ve read what happened in the judicial court of HIGHCOM three years ago. We’re weaker than the Insurrectionists and they sense it. It won’t be long before a full-blown civil war may occur.”

Cortana was silent for a few long moments as she processed this information and extrapolated several future scenarios. With the information she was given, plus what she learned from Dr. Halsey during the War, all her scenarios ended in high bloodshed. She shuddered – far from a welcoming homecoming; it seemed that both she and John had only been rescued from one War to stop a potential wipeout of Humanity by their own hands.

“Ready yourself for transfer, Cortana,” the shipboard AI spoke up when the Ambassador, Covenant Engineer, Arbiter, and the Ambassador’s assistant finally left the ship through a secure screen of a mix of UNSC MPs and Elites and onto the confines of the orbital platform.

“Ready,” she replied, gathering her ethereal spread from the ship’s network and into the carrier chip. Through the tiny chip, she watched through her data link to Calista as the six Spartans approached the command deck with John breaking off from the group to retrieve the carrier chip. Even though what she and the shipboard AI had just discussed put a slight damper on her spirits, she decided that it was time to let them know that yes, she was still quite alive. Besides, her biometric scanners indicated that John was actually sad, even if his stance and face said otherwise. That touched her.

“Calista, are the extracted data from the fragments ready for transfer?” Cortana heard the Lieutenant Commander ask.

“Can I answer?” she whispered to the shipboard AI.

“Feel free to. I’ve finally diverted all interested parties on the networks to chasing ghosts,” Calista replied. “Besides, it looks like your boyfriend needs some cheering up.”

“He never does anything to cheer me up,” she jokingly said, her facetious attitude growing a bit before she patched just enough power through the data link from her carrier chip to the holographic node sitting above the AI housing unit.

“Sleep well, Chief?” she asked as her holographic form resolve on the small node.

John was extremely good at covering his surprise, but she still detected it as he replied, “Yes. No thanks to your driving.”

“I didn’t drive, Chief,” she said, grinning. “I just navigated.”

“Which is why we took over a month to get here. You’re fired as a navigator, Cortana.” Calista spoke up her holographic form resolving on the node, though Cortana had to step over a bit so their images were not mixed up. The shipboard AI was also grinning from ear to ear, looking at more of the gaping expressions of the crew than at the Lieutenant Commander or Master Chief. “Now shoo. Off my ship, you.”

“I’ll send you a postcard,” Cortana said as John approached and moments later, took the carrier chip out of the AI housing unit. She still was aware of her surroundings, though she was no longer connected to any network, but the chip was still powerful enough for her to pop up as a tiny hologram as she stood in the palm of John’s hand. Military pleasantries and exchanges were done between the Lieutenant Commander and the Master Chief as the Spartans prepared to debark.

As John approached the rest of Blue Team, Cortana heard him whisper just barely above audible, saying, “It’s good to see you again, Cortana.”

“It’s good to see you too, John,” she whispered her reply. “I missed you.”

 

~*~*~*~


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

0800, August 14, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ In orbit above Arcadia, Meridian Station \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

The gleaming white metal hull that encompassed Meridian Station above Arcadia filled the bridge viewports of the _Winter_. She was here, under the guise of a ship pulling in for some R &R down on the planet below, but in reality, two three-man Spartan teams had been deployed. One team had traveled to the planet below and the other onto the station. There had been plenty of rumors circulating the network that Insurrectionist cells had been operating a weapons smuggling ring from Arcadia, even though this planet and its station were controlled by the UNSC and had plenty of UNSC ships rotating in and out of its docks each day.

All rebel cells found in Arcadia City and on the station had been successfully neutralized by the Spartans.

Fred stood in the back, near the door to the bridge, watching the flurry of activities as the _Winter_ started on its preparations to undock and leave. The requisite messages of a ship and its personnel who had thoroughly enjoyed themselves on the planet’s surface were being transmitted by the two AIs. Those two were just as bad, if not worse than when the AIs Jerrod and Serina had been bickering aboard the Forerunner ship, over three years ago. But somehow, they always managed to do their duties without cross-wiring each other and collapsing the shipboard network matrix.

Suddenly, one of the officers on COM shouted, “Multiple contacts jumping into orbit at six-o-clock! Ai-eff-eff as UNSC vessels…radiological signatures spiking!”

“Nukes launched!” Calista said, just as the ship violently rocked from multiple salvo impacts, throwing everything awry and cutting off the AI and whatever the Lieutenant Commander was about to say.

Fred lost his balance as the ship viciously shuddered from further impacts and dimly heard the red alert tone sound off as he hit the ground, hard. He shook his head to clear it. Emergency lighting had not kicked in yet as he struggled to get up, hearing Lieutenant Commander Creighton shout, “Detatch us from the station now, Krascinski!”

“Sir, both AIs are offline, repeat both AIs are offline!” some one from the consoles shouted as the ship shook from more impacts.

“Spartan-one-zero-four, get on engineering and get me ship status! COM, eye-dee those ships ASAP! Weapons, give me all you got against those missiles! Deploy Longsword squadron! Krascinski, evasive maneuvers!” the Lieutenant Commander ordered, coughing as acrid smoke from fires all around the bridge burned.

“Sir,” Fred replied as he snapped to and hauled the heavy I-beam that had crashed on top of the officers that had been manning Engineering off and to the side. Weightlessness suddenly descended, as the ship finally detached itself from the power generators of the station and pushed away with all haste.

Blinding white light filled the bridge’s viewports as the earlier relay of nuclear missiles impacted the station, turning it into a giant blooming flower of fire and shrapnel. Fred thought he saw the outline of one other ship trying to escape, but that was short lived as the nuclear shockwave slammed into the _Winter_ and sent it careening through space. He planted the magnetic soles of his armor on the bridge floor and managed to grab one of the officers that had not secured himself properly and was flying towards bridge aft. He heard the I-beam crash into the aft wall just as he set the officer down.

With his other hand, he quickly scrolled through the multiple emergency lights and statuses that covered the console. He managed to quickly isolate the severest of damages and looked up to see the Lieutenant Commander immensely occupied by other pressing concerns. The XO was out cold on the deck, her body floating only a meter off the station she was at. There was a large gash on the side of her head and blood was flowing freely. Relaying ship status to the overwhelmed Lieutenant Commander would eat too much precious time. If he didn’t take action now, then the ship would be lost, along with the entire crew.

He activated COM and directed it towards the damage teams that had been already set to action even before they had detached from the station. “Dee-tees on decks twenty through twenty-seven, venting of atmosphere in ten seconds. Evacuate now.” On TEAMCOM, he said, “Master Chief, get Blue Team to decks thirty through thirty-four and get those fires out ASAP. Bypass twenty through twenty-seven.”

One burning green wink of acknowledgement from John was all he needed. He didn’t even know if they had ten seconds, but he made sure he actually counted to ten before pressing several overrides to vent the atmosphere from twenty to twenty-seven. Immediately, one side of the ship’s status board turned green. Others were still burning red or yellow, but as time seemed to speed up again, he became aware of an all too familiar sound of a radiological alarm blaring through the speakers.

“Four of the seven ships are hot, sir!” one of the officers stated just before the ship violently shuddered again.

“Nav, get me emergency coordinates to Reach! Fred, what’s the trans-light engine’s status?”

“Charge at ninety-seven sir,” Fred immediately replied as he roughly swept the board clean and brought the Slipspace engine statuses to the forefront.

“They’re locked onto us, Commander,” the same officer replied. “We’re surrounded.”

“COM do you have ai-dee on the ships?” Lieutenant Commander Creighton calmly asked.

“Yes, sir,” the young officer stated. “ _Elegy_ , _Aleph Serenity_ , _Seraph for Gold_ , _Venezia_ , _Echo of Summer_ , _Alexander_ , and _Procyon_.”

“Those bastards,” Fred barely heard the Lieutenant Commander’s whisper of surprise over the blaring alarms that have yet to be silenced. “That’s over half of the Orion Fleet.” Lieutenant Commander Creighton paused for a moment before barking, “Jump to Slipspace as soon as those engines are full. Recall Longswords. Krascinski, give me ramming speed on the farthest ship. Let’s see who bites first, them or the nukes. Weapons shoot to kill. They’re not UNSC anymore. They’re traitors.”

The entire bridge was silent for a moment before COM finally shut the alarms off, but left the emergency lighting and alarm lights on. Like clockwork snapped to a new hinge, the crew suddenly burst into action and Fred silently willed the charging Slipspace engines to go faster as a shudder was felt throughout the bridge as power was poured into the engines.

“Eight nukes headed our way! Impact port aft imminent!”

“Longsword squadron on deck!”

“Port weapons, blow the nukes to hell! Increase forward fire--”

The Slipspace engine status suddenly winked green and Fred shouted, “We have green!”

“Get us the hell out of here, Genevieve!” Lieutenant Commander Creighton ordered.

For one long second, the exterior of the ship turned immensely white then faded to black and then the angry blotches of Slipspace appeared. Fred let go of the breath he had been unconsciously holding. They had made it.

 

* * *

 

1500, August 17, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Enroute to Reach \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_ \ 79 hours into ship-wide Red Alert.

 

“Sir, I have an update on the numbers of the deceased,” Lieutenant Jacobi quietly said as she entered the conference chamber. The table was covered with multiple holographic charts and paper paraphernalia and more than one mug of coffee was resting on the table.

“How many?” Lieutenant Commander Creighton tiredly asked, not even looking up from the holographic table or charts.

“Three more this afternoon, sir,” the Lieutenant said. “Petty Officers Second Class Salinka, Greagor, and Toruth.”

“Maintenance Engineering,” the Lieutenant Commander whispered, finally looking up and took the datapad from Lieutenant Jacobi.

Fred watched the exchange in silence. None of them got more than three hours of sleep since the ambush and all of them were trying to repair the ship with what they had. John, Kelly, Douglas, Jerome, and Linda were currently down in the starboard-aft decks below helping move heavy equipment while others who had survived and were not severely injured. He would be joining them in a moment after he gave his update on the port-side repairs that he had overseen and helped with for the past twenty-four hours.

The ship’s internal network was a mess, but both AIs had survived the massive power surge, though they were very limited in the data they could collect or move around on, hence the need to shuttle around datapads full of updates on the repairs. Cortana was currently with the Master Chief while Calista was maintaining her presence around the bridge and the conference room as best as possible.

“Sir, you should get some rest,” Lieutenant Jacobi spoke up after a moment of silence.

“Not until we get to Reach, Eileen,” the Lieutenant Commander replied. “Calista, do you have the crew manifest on all seven ships?”

“I have six of the seven. I also agree with Lieutenant Jacobi. You should rest,” the AI replied.

“I’ll rest when I’m dead. How does the port-side look, Fred?”

Fred handed the datapad with the updates on repairs over to the Lieutenant Commander and said, “Levels twenty-three through twenty-five are unsalvageable without a full EVA repair team and supplies that are not currently on the ship, sir. The hulls surrounding the others are almost done being reinforced, but Engineering recommends no atmosphere in the damaged compartments until we arrive at a proper repair facility.”

“Noted. Thanks.”

Fred gave a curt nod, due to the enactment of the wartime high alert no-saluting-officers stance, to the Lieutenant Commander who absently returned it and left.

 

Holding up a two-ton support cross-beam that was being welded as quickly as possible to the hull of the damaged hangar bay of the ship was almost like holding up a small support log that was supposed to go into a wood cabin, for John. Stress and the creaking noise of Slipspace pounding on the weakened hull still rang everywhere on the ship, but Cortana’s estimate of their ETA to Reach placed them about two hours away. Both AIs’ assessments said that the ship would hold with some reinforcements. He watched out of the corner of his eyes, the Lieutenant Commander slowly walking among the cloth-covered bodies of the crew who had perished, on the far side of the hangar bay.

A very short speech had been said over the PA system by the Lieutenant Commander a half-day ago, and it had been straight to the point. Somehow, rebel forces had managed to capture or convince over half of a UNSC fleet to defect. The information had sent chills down his spine and even Cortana had nothing to say about that. She had been slightly detached after they had managed to get power rerouted to the AI housing unit and activated the two AIs again. The usual quips and sarcasm had not been there for the past three-and-a-half day.

“Kelly, move your side up a quarter meter,” Cortana said over the PA, her voice sounding extremely scratchy, due to the initial system overload that had fried a lot of electrical wirings on the ship.

The Master Chief felt a very tiny shift on his end of the cross-beam, which stretched half the length of the bay and was held up by him and Kelly on either end while other crew members hurried to weld it in place. He saw Linda and Jerome further down the bay, holding another cross-beam while Douglas was tromping through the length of the bay with two large T-beams against his shoulder before disappearing through a hatch to help crew members on another compartment area on the starboard side. He also saw Fred emerge from another hatch, carefully carrying an I-beam that was going to be used for the bay’s aft-bulkhead.

John took a quick glance at the rows and rows of the dead and minutely shook his head. At least a quarter of those who had died had perished when levels twenty through twenty-seven had been evacuated of air. Some had died from smoke inhalation or burns, but most had died from the lack of air. If those fires in the levels had been allowed to burn during their escape, then it would have ignited fuel lines and possibly have caused an internal electrical surge to overload the trans-light engines. Had he been in the same situation as Fred had been in, he would have done the same and ordered an evacuation of the atmosphere.

“Okay Chief, the welds look like they’re holding,” Cortana said. “You can let go.”

He stepped back and a few of the crew scurried in with torches to finish up their welds. He then crossed the width of the bay to help a group of crewmen clear the debris from one of the Pelicans that had been pretty much destroyed by collapsing debris and from being snapped loose of its secured housing during the escape from Arcadia. John couldn’t help but think of the bitter irony as he hauled several heavy hull plates of the wrecked Pelican to the side: the Covenant had briefly united Humanity from its own squabbles only to divide them again.

 

* * *

 

1600, August 21, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Reach. One week into the Insurrection.

 

Fred carefully examined the casing that contained ammunition for his MA5D assault rifle for any impurities and then slotted the ammunition back into the case. As soon as he was done, he stowed his gear and finally took out a sharpening stone and the two blades he always carried on his armor. The rest of Blue Team was sitting in various spots around this particular section of the barracks they had been temporarily housed in until the next mission came up. They too were cleaning their gear and weapons. With the _Ember of Winter_ still undergoing refits and repairs, they had been shuttled around to various planets to stop the rebels, by the UNSC vessel named _Seville_ , though they had never met the captain of the ship face-to-face.

“You think that cat’s going crazy with all those dock workers repairing the _Winter_?” Jerome asked, cleaning the barrel of a battle rifle.

“She and her kittens are probably hiding somewhere,” Linda replied, assembling the pieces of the sniper rifle that was set in a row before her.

“Reminds me of that time when Chief Mendez sent Red Team into that overcrowded center to search for Grey Team’s flag. Too much noise and too crowded with civilians,” Douglas said, shaking his head.

“The Chief planted Grey Team’s flag in the middle of civilians?” Kelly asked, slightly dubious.

“Grey Team moved the flag from its original location and planted it there,” Douglas replied. “Chief didn’t even know where it was until he grilled the Greys about it. It was probably the first and only time he actually had to radio a team about a flag. That’s why it took us one extra day to make it back. Jerome told us to wait until nightfall to move.”

“Even then, it was strung in the middle of two seven-meter high platforms that could only be reached by shimmying one person across to dislodge it while the other two had to stand in the middle of some strange muck full of plants that was in the middle of the center so the flag was not dirtied, per the Chief’s rules. Two people across the wiring that held the platforms and the flag up, everything would crash down,” Jerome followed up.

“That muck was full of fire ants,” Douglas groused.

“Ouch,” Kelly quipped, though Fred did see a gleam of amusement in her eyes.

“Security guards thought we were vandals,” Jerome said, shrugging a bit before returning to cleaning his weapons.

“Vandals armed with tranq dart guns, flashbangs, and stun grenades?” Linda asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Nah, we just stole some paint guns instead. It was much more fun,” Douglas replied after a moment.

Fred was glad that they were talking about what felt like happier days in their lives, though he did not bring himself to join their conversation. He remembered that particular activity, a derivation from the usual rough and most-of-the-time-brutal CTF that Chief Mendez used to have them play. Blue Team had easily come in first with their captured flag from Green Team, though Green, having been led by Kurt, had almost beaten them. Almost. Red Team had been assigned to retrieve Grey Team’s flag, but it had been no where near the initial intel that Chief Mendez gave the team, until the Chief had gotten the information from the successful Greys. Now it seemed that one of the many mysteries of what Grey Team did had been solved.

He looked towards John who had also been quietly listening to the conversation. John gave a very tiny, almost imperceptible shrug and went back to stowing the rest of his gear. The past week since the Spartans had returned to Reach and had been deployed to various colonies to quell rebellious factions had been hard. At least to Fred, he definitely felt the weight of his Junior Lieutenant’s rank on his shoulders. He had found out more than he liked about most of the rebel factions – with most of them having hid and bided their time during the Human-Covenant War.

Now the proverbial rock that had been sheltering them had been turned over and they were ready to spring out like a cornered snake and venomously bite. Too many civilians had been caught up in several of their firefights, and even when civilians looked like civilians, they had turned and started shooting at them. It didn’t sit well with him, even if the post-brief and analysis by ONI had told him that they were all rebels. At least most of his team kept their spirits up by reminiscing about the past.

He pushed the doubts to the back of his mind, though however, he couldn’t help but wonder how long this rebellion would last.

 

* * *

 

0700, August 28, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Reach. Two weeks into the Insurrection.

 

The last three times the Master Chief had been in this particular highly secured briefing room on Reach, his life had significantly changed. But that had all been before the planet had been partially glassed. The architects had rebuilt the facility and the room to great accuracy, but there were small, minute things that were different than the original room. Today felt like another of those three days that his life was about to change.

He remembered the last time that he had been in the secured room; there had been two-dozen Spartans sitting around him. Now there was only him and the other five who had survived to see the end of the War. Of course, John did not discount the fact that the cluster of bodies sitting in the column of benches next to his left was SPARTAN-I.Is, or the fact that the four active SPARTAN-IIIs were sitting in front of the SPARTAN-IIs.

Their combined number though, was only at nineteen. The four years that had passed since the sudden appearance of the second and third generation Spartans had not been kind to the ONI SPARTAN-I.Is. Where there had been sixteen, now there was only nine present. Even though John had read about the operational history of the first generation Spartans, or technically, children of the first generation, if they were here for a combined op he wanted to know their abilities. The rest of his team knew the third generation Spartans quite well, and from the stories he had heard, it had given him a good assessment on those Spartans’ abilities.

The back door to the briefing room hissed open and a few of them turned around to see who had entered, John included. A person covered in grey armor that looked similar to MJOLNIR descended the steps, but took a seat in the far back of the room, far removed from any of the three groups. Even as John turned back, he had seen the streaks of both dried and fresh blood that was not two days old covering parts of the armor. It had looked like the person had fought his or her way to get here.

The side door to the chamber opened and five people walked in, with only one that was familiar-looking to him. The Spartans stood at attention and saluted. The captain that was leading the group returned their salute and said, “At ease.”

One of the two scientists in the starch-white lab coats approached the podium while the other four sat; among those sitting, John had recognized Lieutenant Commander Creighton.

“Good morning, Spartans,” the scientist at the podium began, “Please take your seats.”

As one, they sat down.

“Some of you know me and to those who don’t know me, I am Doctor Kevin Morales, chief of ONI Section One Special Warfare Research and Development Division. Assembled here today are all surviving Spartans from the multiple decades that Spartans have existed. It’s very good to finally meet you all.

“HIGHCOM has asked me to brief you on the upcoming mission and the situation at hand. As you all know, seven ships of the Orion Fleet attacked and destroyed Meridian Station over Arcadia two weeks ago. The Orion Fleet had been serving out on the fringe borders between UNSC and Covenant space. However, in the past two weeks, we have received reports that other stations and colonies from the fringe ones to inner ones such as Arcadia have also been attacked by several UNSC ships. All attacks happened at roughly the same time.

“We know that the Insurrectionists do not have the materials or the unity to pull a simultaneous attack off, and we also know that they would not decimate key cities on two of the planets that are vital to their trading lanes. Five days ago, we received an encrypted burst report picked up by one of our scouts that contained these images.”

Several images of UNSC vessels appeared to the left of Dr. Morales as he continued to speak, “Visually, the vessels look normal, but upon closer inspection and coupled with what the data from what the scanners picked up before the destruction of the ship, the vessels that you see here are far different from the normal operating parameters. The data that was retrieved while the _Ember of Winter_ was engaged in her primary mission in a Forerunner solar system along with the fragments of data retrieved from the _Spirit of Fire_ that had been lost several decades ago gave us a base comparison against what we’ve received.

“Though these vessels did not have the hallmarks of the Flood-controlled Covenant vessel had crashed to Earth during the last months of the War, all evidence points to it that the vessels that have been randomly attacking colony cities and outposts are Flood-controlled.” To the doctor’s right, a list of several ships totaling at seventeen was shown. “The civil war that has broken out between Insurrectionists and the UN for the past two weeks has only been exacerbated by the appearance of these vessels. These ships are the only known ones to us, so far. There is a great possibility that there are more ships. All attempts to contact and communicate with the known Flood-controlled ships have ended either with the assimilation or the destruction of the contacting ship.”

The images of the UNSC vessels were wiped away and replaced by several familiar-looking forms and shapes of the Flood to John, all of them horrid-looking. Dr. Morales continued, “All of you are familiar with the various types of Flood-forms, having either fought them on Earth or on distant worlds. We know a Gravemind controls most of the actions of the Flood and assimilates all living organisms to its biological construct. However, since the initial attacks, all traces of the destruction left behind yielded no Flood assimilation or forms lingering on the planets.

“Communiqués from the Sangheili have also told us that several of their colonies, along with colonies of the Jiralhanae, Kig-Yar, and Unggoy have also been similarly attacked. We attribute this due to the fact that the Arbiter ordered a scout ship into the Forerunner system after returning to Sangheili space.” The Flood-form images were shrunk and several new images bearing a lone Covenant ship were shown. “This was taken by the _Winter_ when she was engaged in her primary mission. The Arbiter has stated that this ship was a part of a group controlled by the Jiralhanae. It was destroyed by both Sentinels in the system and by the _Winter_. We do not know how the ship was Flood-infected, but intelligence extrapolates that the Flood may have some way of forming a large enough biomass to successfully capture a ship in orbit.

“It is also in this same system that we suspect a Gravemind to be present. Vector calculations of Slipspace jumps from both Flood-controlled Covenant and UNSC ships correlate to this particular system, and data drawn from the _Winter_ show that most of the planets have an unusually large presence of life forms – more than the estimated amount given for an uninhabited planet.

“We do not know how much time Earth and her colonies have until the Flood-mass stops assimilating ships and starts to move towards assimilating colonies.”

All images were now wiped and replaced in full by a single picture of strange-looking object. “The Sangheili have already attempted to send their equivalent of one of our NOVA bombs into the heart of one of the planets from space. Before that ship fell from contact, it had confirmed a non-detonation of the bomb and its subsequent dismantling by the Flood.

“Your mission is to plant three NOVAs on that same planet and make sure it goes off. We’ve already had a successful test during the War on one of the Covenant colonies in the Salia System over their planet Joyous Exultation. It completely destroyed the main planet and its moon, and the resulting gravitational and spatial collapse of that planet has destroyed most of the planets in that system.

“Given the close proximity in which the planets of this Forerunner System orbit around the sun, the NOVAs will be sufficient. A Sangheili strike force will be joining the mission and will be arriving here in two days. Captain James Cutter, Lieutenant Commander Jake Creighton, and Lieutenant Commander Victoria Wittaker of their respective vessels: _Medea Minerva_ , _Ember of Winter_ , and _Seville_ , will be taking you to the Forerunner system. It is all HIGHCOM can risk and spare.” Dr. Morales paused for a moment before wiping all images away. “This mission is extremely high risk and we do not have the time or resources to gather the required intelligence. HIGHCOM knows that there may be a chance that a few may have to be left behind to set the bombs off. They are asking for volunteers.”

The Master Chief understood that it was just like the last mission briefing they had in this secured room, except it was not an unknown enemy they were going after, it was a threat to all life in the galaxy. HIGHCOM had rolled the hard six as predicted by Intelligence, but they were not a hundred percent sure if they would be wasting or spending their lives on this mission.

He and the other Spartans stood without hesitation.

“Good,” Dr. Morales curtly said. “Please sit.” The Spartans sat. “This also brings me to the final point I have about this mission.”

The doctor gestured to the other scientist who was sitting and said, “Doctor Ellen Anders here has been working on an inoculation of sorts against the Flood for the past four years using the research done on the initial participants of Project ORION. She has a prototype inoculation that is ready to go that mimics the few who had been diagnosed with Boren’s Syndrome, but it is not a hundred percent guarantee that the inoculated person will be resistant to Flood-assimilation.

“The inoculation is currently being distributed to all colonies, regardless if they are Insurrectionists or UN. Doctor Anders will be joining you on this mission and will try to develop a more specific inoculation based on your various augmentations.”

The doctor stepped away from the podium and clasped his hands behind him. “We will meet with you individually in the next two days to continue your briefing. Scientists from the UNSC black ops research and development of Peloponnesus will show you what is required for the NOVAs’ activation. Master Chief Spartan-one-one-seven, since you have had extensive experience dealing with the Flood, you have tactical command of this mission.”

John stood and snapped to attention, saying, “Sir, yes sir!”

 

~*~*~*~


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

1400, September 7, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ En-route to Forerunner Solar System \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_.

 

It was a strange formation of ships that cruised through Slipspace, en-route with their payloads to the origin of the sudden and unexpected Flood-expansion. The Covenant assault cruiser, _Glorious Countenance_ , was in the lead, followed closely by the _Ember of Winter_. Flanking the two ships on either side of the formation was the enormous _Medea Minerva_ and the smaller UNSC cruiser, _Seville_. All the Spartans were on the _Winter_ , while the Elite strike force was housed in the _Countenance_. The _Winter_ had been virtually stripped of almost all its unnecessary equipment, but still included three Pelicans and an enormous weapons stock. Both the _Seville_ and _Minerva_ were going to provide support capabilities in the form of air and ground support when they arrived, while the _Countenance_ was going to try to either destroy or draw off as many enemy vessels as possible.

All three of the UNSC ships had linked their AI through the _Counternance_ ’s network to enable all vessels to travel together through the Slipspace hole carved by the _Counternance_. Their capabilities were further boosted by the immense knowledge Cortana carried within her of Covenant networks. Instead of over a month to their destination, scientists aboard the _Seville_ and _Minerva_ had estimated that their trip time to two weeks, agreeing with the assessments made by the Sangheili. However, those two weeks still proved to be quite interesting between the Spartans in the calm before the storm…

 

The entire fleet, if four ships could be called a fleet, was on high alert, which meant that no one was in cryo…which also meant that the corridors were filled with more people than Fred saw on average. He knew that the engineers and scientists had averaged their time to the Forerunner system to be about two weeks, since the Elites’ assault cruiser had initiated the Slipspace jump, but there was no confirmation date, hence the high alert status. They could jump out of Slipspace at anytime, and he knew that the Spartans were always ready for action.

Almost all the Spartans kept themselves active by either sparring, learning quite a bit from the extensive database they had about the Flood, or weapons practice, especially with the unusual weapons that the Covenant Engineers were creating. At least two Weaponsmaster Engineers were aboard each vessel, creating hybrid weapons for all groups. The _Winter_ ’s AI had already identified one of the bulbous floating creatures as the original Weaponsmaster that they had rescued earlier in the year.

Fred preferred the conventional weapons, but he had overheard some of the Spartans and their high remarks about the new hybrid weapons, and especially from Douglas, who had taken a certain shine to the Engineers when they created quite a powerful long-range explosive weapon. Cortana had described it as a cross between a fuel rod gun and rocket launcher. Due to the high explosive yield, Douglas had not been allowed to field test it, lest it accidentally blow a hole in the hull of the _Winter_.

As Fred walked by the small weapons range on the ship, he saw the Spartan chatting with one of the Engineers via Cortana who was translating whatever the Engineer was saying. Douglas was also vigorously gesticulating with the bulky weapon in hand, to which the Engineer was nervously eyeing the weapon while trying to keep its attention on the Spartan. Others in the range were practicing with other weapons, but he caught more than a couple looking down the line towards Douglas and the Engineer.

He left the Spartan alone and continued out of the range and passed through a few corridors until he came to the gym. Heavy weapons expert the Spartan may be, but Fred knew that Douglas would never ‘accidentally’ fire any heavies anything unless ordered to.

He entered one of the many hatches that led to the gym and stood to the side. Some of the off duty Marines and skeleton crew members were playing a rough basketball game to one side while some others sat on the side, watch and cheering their teammates on. On the other side, a few of the Spartans were sparring against each other, and Fred spotted Kelly among them. She had slowed herself down considerably to spar against anyone and it looked like a few of them sitting on the sidelines were nursing bruises that she had inflicted on them.

Fred saw John among those sitting on the sidelines, but he didn’t look like he had gone up against Kelly and was instead, carefully observing a pair of hand-to-hand combat sparring SPARTAN-I.Is. Fred focused his attention on Kelly and the young SPARTAN-III she was sparring against, Lucy. Surprisingly enough, even at a slowed speed that was barely enough to give a non-armored SPARTAN-II a chance to defend against Kelly’s attacks, Lucy was dodging most of the attacks with minimal impact. But then again, the SPARTAN-III was wearing the specialized armor, which Calista had told them was named MEGINGJORD. The armor for the SPARTAN-I.Is had been designated as JARNGREIPR by those who had designed and worked on it.

The fact that all three types were named after the three main possessions of the Norse mythological deity that Fred remembered the SPARTAN-IIs’ AI instructor, Deja, speaking about was known to him, but he wondered why they were named so. He shook his head a bit and pushed the strange naming convention from his thoughts.

However, even armored, Lucy was still not fast enough to dodge a sudden flurry of Kelly’s attacks and landed flat on her back, slightly dazed. Kelly approached Lucy and held out a hand to help the young Spartan up before letting the young Spartan walk off the sparring mat alone with some of her pride and dignity still intact. Kelly then looked around, waiting for another opponent to approach until she stopped as she spotted someone lingering at one of the many hatches.

Fred followed her gaze and openly frowned, for he didn’t even see the person until Kelly spotted the person. The mysterious Spartan who had hurried into the briefing on Reach covered in blood-splattered light-grey armor was standing near one of the entrances, seemingly watching everything. The armor was completely clean now and was a dull matte light grey color. Apparently, he was not the only person in the gym to have not noticed the Spartan until now and he suspected that part of the reason was the highly effective and long-duration cloaking device the light-grey-armored Spartan carried and had activated at very random times aboard the ship.

No one knew the Spartan’s name until Cortana had dug into several highly secured databases and found out that the Spartan was code-named Falcon. That was all the information he and the others had gotten. Even Calista had not dug up much, though what little she had dug up had only been given to him because he had requested it. Fred didn’t even think Lieutenant Commander Creighton knew anything about Falcon, seeing that his reaction was most like the others, confusion. However, it was the SPARTAN-I.Is that had the most interesting reaction to this codenamed Spartan – they avoided the Spartan, whether passing in the halls or in the mess. None of them had even deigned to give a reason why they avoided the Spartan. That action alone from the SPARTAN-I.Is made Fred nervous about that particular Spartan.

“You look like you want to spar,” Kelly challenged, pointing directly at Falcon.

Falcon’s head shook a silent ‘no’.

“Scared?” Kelly said, taking one step towards the Spartan.

“Kelly, stand down,” Fred, interrupted, stepping forward before either could say or do anything. There was something about Falcon, right now, that suddenly made him uneasy, and it was not from the simple akimbo stance that the Spartan had adopted. He didn’t know where the fear came from, except it seemed like a strange vestigial whisper from Kurt that was guiding him to intervene. He took a quick glance at the SPARTAN-I.Is who had stopped their sparring and had _visibly_ backed up at least half-a-meter away from Kelly…from Falcon. That was the source of his fear. “Stand down, Chief Petty Officer,” he repeated. “That’s an order.”

_When even your most staunches of allies move back, perhaps its time to start paying attention because they sure as hell won’t tell you what’s scaring the bejeezus out of them, but they damn sure know that_ something _is coming…most of the time, bad_ , Chief Mendez’s voice echoed in his head.

Falcon was the only Spartan who did not remove his or her helmet since they saw the Spartan on Reach…at least he never saw Falcon remove his or her helmet. The Spartan always had it on, even when he or she was getting food in the ship’s mess and it made him uneasy. Whenever Linda in her icy Zen no-thought mode, it had did not made him as anxious as he felt right now. Something was not _right_ about Falcon.

Mentally, he shook his head, not really one for hunches, but all his instincts were screaming at him to make sure no one _provoked_ Falcon. What little material he had gotten from Calista after Cortana had reported the mysterious Spartan’s name was only speculation on Calista’s part: the report of the entire rebel leadership on Regatta, which they had received earlier in the year, being assassinated without a trace one week after their hostage-rescue mission, did not help his worry at all. He normally would not have paid attention to such a report, but since that encounter with their rescuer whom he was almost sure that was the Spartan named Falcon, he had long suspected that Falcon was the one who had carried out that particular mission. He voiced that thought to the shipboard AI and the AI had extrapolated on it to produce some _interesting_ theories.

Fred saw the brief surprise flash across Kelly’s face as he pulled rank on her; she had not been expecting it at all. But that flash of surprise was quickly replaced by a neutral look and she nodded, though Fred saw that it was somewhat reluctant. Even John had a slightly surprised look though that had been closed just as quickly as Kelly’s expression did. Explaining his actions to his would not help, but he just hoped that they were perceptive enough to see the possible threat that the Spartan known as Falcon could be. He had no doubt that Falcon would do anything to get the mission done, as they would too, but was this Spartan going to be a potential snag during their mission?

 

Impeccably neat rows of various flasks, syringes, and beakers both empty and filled with strange things sat all around the medical bay that Jake found his half-sister, Dr. Ellen Anders, working in. There were various diagrams and holographic DNA strands gracing several wall projectors, with at least half of them human-looking while the other half looked quite alien. The doctor herself was currently sitting in front of some device, taking notes in a datapad while looking back and forth between the device and something in a Petri dish. Her back was to him.

Jake gently rapped his knuckles on the side of the open hatch, startling Ellen slightly and asked, “May I come in?”

She looked back towards him and in a distracted tone, said, “Yes…just don’t touch the flasks on the right side.”

He approached and noted that a four of the multiple syringes were filled with translucent liquid. Each had been meticulously marked as either ‘S-1.1’, ‘S-2’, or ‘S-3’. Those syringes were also laid out in a neat row, as if ready to be injected in quick succession. “How go the inoculations?” he asked, stopping at the large table she was current working on.

“I have preliminary inoculations ready to be tested on each of the Spartan groups,” she replied while jotting a few notes down on the datapad. “I’d rather test it on one from each group of Spartans first. I’m still working on the Elites’ DNA.”

“How soon?” he asked.

“We can start with you,” she flatly stated, placing the datapad down, along with the Petri dish and leaned back a bit to give him a full glare of anger.

Jake was taken aback by the look on her face and realized that not only did ONI give her whatever sensitive data they had left on the SPARTAN Projects in order for her to try to create an inoculation, she had been given _everything_. That included ORION, which meant that she was deep within the folds of ONI. “So, I guess you now know,” he simply said, no malice, just acceptance in his tone.

“Know?!” she cried, incredulous, “I didn’t _want_ to know about all of this – about what inhumane experiments our government were doing to ordinary people – to kids!” She abruptly stood up with such force that it knocked her stool over, but she didn’t care, she was on a tirade now. “Cradle robbers, all of you! Stole the children and created nightmares for their families, for what? Just for a sacrifice of so many innocent lives? How could you have agreed to this?! How could have mother agreed to it?! Your father…how could _he_ have agreed to it? There is no greater good in stealing children for experimentation purposes! Were they monsters?! Why the hell did you not tell me?!”

“Ellen,” he said, putting his hands slightly up in a soothing manner, trying to calm her down. “Please…”

Whether it was something in those two simple words, or just his tone, it made the doctor freeze for a moment before the anger and her sudden outburst fade quickly away. Her hands dropped to her side and she gave him a saddened look. “Lies, deceit, cloaks, and daggers, that’s all there is to my life anymore. Xenobiology was my passion, Jake, and they took it away from me by showing me this and demanding that I create something that is not natural, not even supposed to be injected into the human DNA. Its not biological warfare, they keep telling me, it’s to save people from certain death…” She picked up the stool and slowly sat in it. “Why did it have to be like this?”

Jake was at a slight loss as to what to do, but were times in the past that he remembered some of his long-deceased SPARTAN-I.I teammates, when they had still been children, try to comfort one another whenever something bad happened during training. He tentatively reached out and placed what he hoped was a comforting hand on his half-sister’s shoulder. She shook a bit beneath his touch, but no tears fell from her eyes.

“It’s going to hurt, Jake,” she quietly said after a few long moments. “The inoculation that was created for the masses will only work on a small percentage – _that_ we’re sure of. Those who receive and their bodies accept it will feel quite a bit of pain. It’s going to be the same with the Spartans. I’m ninety-nine percent sure that the inoculation will take to each Spartan, but I’d rather test it out first.”

“So you know about the augmentations then?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered. “The scientists working with me have theorized that it may be as painful as that, because this inoculation will be adding to the soup of augmentations running through a Spartan’s body. There should be no deaths associated with it though, since those in ORION who had this type of mutagen fully survived.”

“The crew doesn’t know what I was, Ellen,” he said, withdrawing his hand from her shoulder and crossed both arms over his chest. “You do know that I’m not going down onto that planet and that if the Flood does successfully take over this ship, I’m going to initiate the self-destruct sequence. I’d rather that we have a select number of people from the crew, and three Spartans to test out your inoculation, and me, in the same medical bay when we do this. If the formula for the crew holds, we’ll send it over the AI network.”

“Cloaks and daggers,” she murmured. “Always the same as mother. I know how a soldier’s integrity works.” Stepping off her stool, she seemingly squared herself to full confidence and walked over to the table where she picked up four of the capped syringes before walking to another table and plucking a handful more. She turned to him and said, “Gather your people. I’ll let the medics know what to do. We’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied and saw her frown, but before she could say anything, he told her, “You’re giving all of us a chance to survive, Ellen. Without you, we’d probably wouldn’t last five minutes against a horde of Flood.”

“Cold comfort, Jake,” she said. “You and I are the same even if we have different reasons. I know why you left ONI and that is why I’m resigning from ONI when I get back. ONI killed the people we love and they even managed to make your girlfriend a scapegoat before she was killed by Insurrectionists.”

“Leigh was never my girlfriend,” he defensively said. “She was my commanding officer and a sister to me. But you’re right. ONI kept killing all the people I cherished. They may not be the blessed entity that the UN and UNSC depend on, but they’re the only ones who tried to preempt a civil war. They tried their best. Don’t make an enemy out of them, Ellen. I’d hate to lose you too.”

“You won’t.”

Jake watched his half-sister leave and could help but shudder a bit, despite the comfortable temperature in the lab. Despite the confidence he had heard in Ellen’s voice, he had no doubt that ONI was not going to make it easy for her to resign from their service, especially with her knowledge. He had only managed to transfer into Fleet because Section Zero had been dissolved, and even then, he knew that he had never been fully out of ONI’s reach.

 

It was now the hour of the wolf, when the specters and demonic apparitions that haunted the dreams of many were at their highest in tricks. However, no such things existed aboard the ship and certainly not while the four-ship ‘fleet’ was cruising through Slispace. Specters did exist in the vast AI network, but to Cortana, they were merely glitches in the imperfect way that people designed them. Flaws were everywhere, and each time an AI passed through one, they took it upon themselves to correct it. So now, in this hour of the wolf, the shipboard AI was currently going through a diagnostic cycle to de-fragment several of her processes along with organizing her compartments. Cortana had taken upon herself to monitor all functions of the ship and watch over the several crew members in the medical bay.

Among those currently lying prone in the bay were several crew members, Lieutenant Commander Creighton, and three Spartans from each project: Janissary James, Frederic-104, and Tom-B292. All were in a medically induced sleep, though Dr. Anders had recommended twelve hours of careful monitoring before letting any others in the Fleet be injected. Though the original inoculation was being distributed to as many colonies as possible, they were designed for general DNA, not the slightly altered DNA enzymes of those in the military. Of course, all the Spartans had been augmented beyond the normal range of injections those who served had received in their first medical within the service, so they had to be monitored too.

She had read about the augmentations that Dr. Halsey and her SPARTAN-II Project team had done to the young children. She had also read over Colonel Ackerson and Kurt-051’s files of the augmentations done to the SPARTAN-IIIs. However, none of those files contained any video footage for her to look at, so watching the reactions of several of the crew members, including the Spartans when they had been injected earlier in the day had distressed her greatly.

Even before those crew members had been injected with the inoculation, she had heard Dr. Anders explicitly state that a few of them were going to have a reaction. Some wouldn’t but a few would. What the doctor had not told them was that those who had the reactions were the ones taking to the inoculation. Cortana had ‘accidentally’ overheard the conversation between the Lieutenant Commander and Dr. Anders several hours earlier. It was supposed to be a private one, considering that Dr. Anders had dismissed both AIs from the lab before the Lieutenant Commander showed up, but Cortana couldn’t help herself.

She liked the way the train of thoughts ran around the mind of Dr. Anders – it was quite brilliant and reminded her greatly of both herself and Dr. Halsey. She had peeked into the young doctor’s files though and found that irony had Dr. Anders as a former student of Dr. Halsey. However, they had not gotten along and parted on quite bad terms. She wondered what the disagreement was, but decided that that piece of information was for a later investigation. Right now, Dr. Anders had her respect, not only for the brilliancy of her work, but the fact that she _did not_ like what she was doing to the Spartans, to the crew. However, it would give them a greater chance of surviving the mission.

Still, she had been bothered by the expressions of extreme pain on those several crew members, including the Spartans, when their bodies had started to react with the inoculation. John was going to have to go through that, and she did not want to see him suffer. Her scheduled self-diagnostic was not supposed to happen for another few months, and if she conducted one right now, would it give her enough time to black out and not have to see the pain on John’s face?

She had vowed long ago to protect him and to keep others from hurting him ever again, but this was going to hurt him, even more so that he was no longer a young teenager with malleable DNA enzymes and hormones that would readily adapt to a slight biological change. Cortana comforted herself a bit on the thought of at least the medics would be able to give John painkillers, unlike the SPARTAN-I.Is, who couldn’t even take any, lest they get quite inebriated.

She continued to watch from the multiple cameras that covered this medical bay before taking a quick look at the other statuses of the ship. All was well and not an electron was out of place. She carried her query and status report through the network and got acknowledgements from the other AIs on the two other UNSC vessels. Pollux was the slightly stuffy yet wittily sarcastic AI of the _Medea Minerva_ , while Aether, a philosophical but loyal AI, was the AI of the _Seville_. Both were sixth-generational AI. The Elites’ vessel had no AI, but all three UNSC ships were connected through the Battlenet.

A sudden movement in the cameras surrounding med bay caught her attention and she withdrew her presence from the AI network and back to the _Winter_ ’s network. She wondered if it was a mouse that had finally appeared on the cameras. Cortana was well aware of the fact that the ship’s cat and kittens were aboard and still quite alive, but she did wonder how they managed to survive, considering she had never seen them get any food or water, with the occasional rarity that the SPARTAN-II, Linda would bring the small feline family something to eat. Where there were cats, there were usually mice…

She looked around, hoping to catch the movement again, and hoping that she could use this opportunity to prove to Calista that there were indeed mice aboard the ship. However, there was no movement again…except – there!

_That’s strange_ , Cortana thought to herself as she zoomed one of the cameras in and saw the movement again. To an outsider or just a passerby, what could be called a twitch in one of Lieutenant Commander Creighton’s hand was not exactly what she would classify as a twitch. To her sharp eyes, it looked like someone had slipped an invisible hand into one of the sleeping Lieutenant Commander’s own hand and was giving it a reassuring squeeze.

She was about to raise the alarm, for the only person aboard the ship that she knew who had an incredibly effective cloaking mechanism was the Spartan codenamed Falcon. Even with her eyes and all the sensors that were tapped into the medical bay, she could barely tell that there was a humanoid figure in the room, standing next to the pallet that Lieutenant Commander Creighton was lying on.

[Do not raise the alarm, Cortana.]

Cortana gave a start. That had been sent into her own system – breaching several firewalls that she was sure were secured. She traced the address and found it to be right where she was staring at seemingly blank air. Her curiosity piqued as to how this Spartan managed to bypass her firewalls to send her a direct message. [Falcon?]

[Do not raise the alarm. I am not here to harm any of them.]

[Then why are you here?]

[These are my brethren in arms. I have not seen them for so long. Is it wrong for me to miss them and see them when I truly can?]

[You’re a survivor of the War?]

[Yes.]

Cortana watched, greatly intrigued as the barely visible outline of the mysterious Spartan moved from the Lieutenant Commander, who had, remarkably, a more peaceful look on his face than before, move to the next Spartan, Janissary James. There was a very small, very slight imprint of a hand on the blanket covering the SPARTAN-I.I’s shoulder that signified Falcon’s presence.

[Why distance yourself from them then? Your actions make them suspicious and scared of you. Why keep your helmet on and wall yourself?]

[Because it is the only way I can protect them.]

[From what?]

[From those who seek to hurt or destroy them.]

As she continued to watch, Falcon had moved from the second-generation SPARTAN-I.I and to Tom, also placing a barely visible gauntleted hand on the shoulder of the young Spartan. The cloaked Spartan stayed there for a few moments before moving to the final Spartan, Frederic.

[A bit dramatic aren’t you?]

[You’d do the same, Cortana. You’d do the same, especially if it was to protect the Master Chief.]

Cortana frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. This was a slightly disturbing turn of events and it suddenly felt eerily similar to what the Gravemind had been taunting her about during her time in captivity. Except this Falcon was no Gravemind, even if there was no intentional malice in the words she read across her system. She shook her head – yes, Falcon was right – she’d protect the Spartans, especially John, and yes, in a subtle way, though she didn’t understand why Falcon was being subtle about it.

This particular Spartan was quite a riddle and she was greatly intrigued to try to solve the mystery, even if everything she had tried to attempt to get information was completely blocked. Trying to retrieve Falcon’s name had been tough, and even when she had found it, it seemed like a given reward, frustrating her to no end. Frustrating, but a challenge nonetheless and she was determined to find out who or what exactly Falcon was, besides just a veteran Spartan from the War. Even the biological scanners in the medical bay could not get a reading through to the cloaked Spartan to determine the Spartan’s gender.

Falcon sent her a message: [I read the reports. Others may not see the subtlety of the facts, but I was trained to read between the lines. The Master Chief has not been impulsive in any of his actions before, but when you were captured, he made it his priority to rescue you. You protect him just as I protect the others.]

_Because he made a promise to me_ , Cortana thought. _He kept his promise_. She kept silent; she didn’t want this particular stranger psychoanalyzing her at all. It made her feel distinctly uncomfortable.

[I am not your enemy, Cortana.]

[I know. Why are the other Spartans, the one-point-ones, so skittish? Can I trust you?]

[Can you trust anyone?]

She pondered on that esoteric question for a moment before a very tiny movement from the almost invisible Falcon diverted her attention. Far from just a simple hand of comfort on Janissary James or Tom’s shoulders, or the more intimate squeeze of reassurance of the Lieutenant Commander’s hand, Cortana saw the slight, tentative touch of reassurance as Falcon’s gloved hands brushed along the forehead of Frederic. She couldn’t tell, not with Falcon’s cloaking device firmly in place, but her guess had to be that that touch was as affectionate as the mysterious Spartan’s reassurance to the Lieutenant Commander.

At that moment, revelation or at least a click of all the pieces of the puzzle seemed to strike Cortana. The mysterious Spartan _had_ to be female – there was no other logical explanation. She wouldn’t put it past ONI to actually do this sort of thing, considering what Colonel Ackerson had done when he had ‘recruited’ Kurt-051 to train the SPARTAN-IIIs. But for what greater purpose was there to this recruitment or a faked death? She sent her message: [Lieutenant Hattersfield?]

[Good guess, but I am not that deceased Spartan.]

The near-invisible hand withdrew and then Cortana could no longer see the Spartan anymore and only received one last transmission saying: [I am just a guardian.]

 

* * *

 

0941, September 14, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Forerunner System \ Aboard the UNSC _Ember of Winter_. Operation NOVA about to commence.

 

A subtle shift in the gravitational field that ran throughout the ship told John that they were about to emerge from Slipspace. All the other Spartans had also felt it, judging from the various reactions he saw across many of their open faceplates. All of their gear and equipment had already been stowed in the Pelicans thirty minutes ago, which had been stripped to the extreme to make enough room for all teams and their three packages aboard.

All three teams were a mix of each Spartan generation, though one of the teams was missing SPARTAN-IIIs, with the four-man team having been separated into pairs. Not that John didn’t trust his fellow Spartans’ judgment, but since the others had worked with the SPARTAN-IIIs, they knew their abilities far better than John had. He had watched the sparring sessions carefully, and using that and the dossiers that the shipboard AI had provided to him, he had carefully crafted the teams, trying to ensure that all three teams: Blue, Red, and Green, had an equal mix of abilities.

Normally, he’d let the other team leads of Red and Green choose who they wanted to be on their teams, but this mission was too vital for a pick-and-choose. He had also not missed the relieved looks that several of the SPARTAN-I.Is had displayed when he had sent the team rosters through the HUDs of all the Spartans’ helmets. He had noticed that none of the first-generational Spartans liked to get close to the strange Spartan who only went by a codename of Falcon. It was puzzling, but he could not afford to have the Spartans be skittish, so he had placed the strange Spartan with the least amount of first-generational Spartans – with Red Team. He needed all of them wired tight and frosty, even those with not a lot of combat experience.

He looked at all of them, even the first-generational ones whom he barely knew. However, the two weeks spent aboard the ship, traveling towards their vital mission had drawn all of them closer. They were Spartans, they were his Spartans, and he briefly wondered how many of them would survive the mission. John shook his head slightly in his helmet. He would make sure that all of them did survive, to the best of his abilities, and he knew that the other team leads would too. They were all protectors of Earth and her colonies. This was their hour to change the tide in their favor.

There was another gravitational shift, this time larger, and the alarms of red alert suddenly blared as multiple thumps reverberated throughout the ship. They had emerged from Slipspace and straight into a ship-to-ship engagement. John and the other Spartans immediately stood and as soon as Lieutenant Commander Creighton’s voice shouted through ship-wide COM, “Spartans, you have a go!” they all sprang into action.

“Let’s move!” he barked over all three frequencies of TEAMCOM as he snapped his faceplate shut.

The Master Chief paused for a lightning quick second to retrieve the small chip containing Cortana from the secondary AI housing unit down on the bay and inserted it into his armor’s AI interface slot. As he jogged towards the Pelican that contained Blue Team, cool liquid seemed to cascade down his mind as Cortana settled in.

“Looks like there’s still plenty of room in here,” she quipped seconds later as the Pelican’s belly closed around Blue Team and the transport lifted off.

John wasn’t entirely sure whether or not Cortana’s quip had been intended for him or the fact that there _was_ some room to maneuver and brace in the belly of the Pelican. It didn’t matter, for the flip-flop sensation of null gravity had taken hold…along with the whumps of plasma and artillery fire from enemy ships as the Pelican raced out of the _Ember of Winter_ and towards its destination. They certainly had the right location of where enemy forces were gathered, now all was left was to successfully execute the mission. Failure would mean death for not just the Spartans, but the entire galaxy of sentient life.

A blue-green planet filled with ancient secrets and legacy of an ancient race awaited the Spartans and the small Elite strike force; one being the children of the fabled ancients, and the other being allies forged by fire. It was not the Forerunners that eagerly anticipated the arrival of the Spartans and Elites, but the entity known as the Flood.

 

~*~*~*~


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

0945, September 14, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Forerunner System \ Operation NOVA: + 4 minutes.

 

Pelicans hurtled through the atmosphere of the blue-green planet, burning red-hot, while another Covenant drop-ship hurtled on an intercept trajectory that would take them close to the dangerous DZ that the Pelicans were aiming for. Flames and super-heated plasma of a blue-white color burned across the view port of the Pelican John and Blue Team were riding in.

Squadrons of Longswords battled against their own kind and Covenant forces in the space above them, while enormous plasma salvos were exchanged between the lone Covenant assault cruiser and Flood-controlled Covenant ships. Missiles flew from the tubes of the UNSC ships, trying to strike down their targets, while ODST pods rained down from the _Medea Minerva_ and _Seville_ , ready to provide as much support as possible to the Spartan and Elite teams making their way down to the planet.

The Master Chief had climbed his way through several g’s to get to the cockpit to see what was going on. The Pelican’s pilots were currently wrestling with the controls, trying to bring some semblance of control to the craft. Something suddenly smashed into the bottom of the Pelican, the thump reverberating through the shuddering craft and threw the nose of the craft up a bit as the pilot and co-pilot fought for control.

“What was that?” he asked Cortana, echoing one of the pilots’ more coarse exclamations of surprise.

“Chief…look out the cockpit…I think that’s how the Flood are getting into space…” Cortana said.

John looked up, just as the plasma and flames started to die down, and switched his HUD to overlay black and white enhancement with the normal view. Outside, he saw massive amounts of globular-looking Flood forms, steadily rising or just plain floating in the air. Streams of smaller, air-capable forms were being fed into many of the floaters, continuously engorging the spheres. He was about to say something but the Pelican suddenly banked violently to the port as the pilot dodged a near-miss of something shooting out of a globular Flood.

Without the black and white enhancement over his HUD, the blue-green expanse of the planet below, dotted by swirls of white-grey clouds, was only marred by the fact that the pasty-brown-red colors of the Flood covered not only the sky but the ground that was rushing up to them. The Pelican’s pilot had dodged a stream of infection forms that had jetted out of one of the stationary Flood globes, but another sharp bank and roll did not yield to their luck. However, the infection forms just splattered in a slimy trail down half of the cockpit’s view port as the forms came in contact with the still superheated Pelican.

“It’s spitting at us…” Cortana said, disgust filling her voice, but then shouted, “Two more, below, flyboys!”

The pilot and co-pilot reacted and the Pelican spun as it nosed down and barely missed the incoming jets of infection form. As the pilot wove the transport madly to dodge the constantly jets of continuous fire from several more Flood spheres, John could hear the audible creaks of the transport’s metal frame and skin against the shear force that the g’s were being put into their maneuvers. There were just too many of them coming towards the Pelican for the transport to successfully dodge.

John hit Blue TEAMCOM and shouted, “Brace for impact!”

Whumps reverberated throughout the hull as infection forms splattered against the transport, shaking it even more violently. “Cortana, how many kilometers are we from the ground?”

Before she could answer, one of the pilots from the other two Pelicans shouted over BROADCOM: “Mayday! Mayday! This is India five-seven-two! We’ve got multiple hits and are rapidly loosing altitude--”

Static hissed over the COM as Cortana said, “Beacon with India five-seven-two lost.”

That was Green Team’s Pelican, and before anything else could be said, several other calls of mayday came through BROADCOM that also ended with hissing static. John looked out of the view port again; the skies were started to get enormously thick and dark with avian Flood and jets of infection forms trying to take down all the incoming forces. John hit TEAMCOM and said, “Spartans, prepare to jump!”

“Chief what--” Cortana began, but he roughly cut her off.

“The Pelicans won’t make it to the ground, not with this much in the air.”

“Copy,” she said, just as two enormous impacts to the starboard side of the Pelican threw him to the port side of the cockpit before he felt gravity invert and the transport slide into a lazy roll.

“Starboard ailerons and engine one lost!” the co-pilot said as the Master Chief dug a hand into the floor to drag himself back up.

“Thorn, we’re jumping in ten seconds. Get out of here!” Cortana ordered over COM to the pilot.

John stumbled as the Pelican took a sudden nose-up and when he made it back to the bay, the door was already slowly opening and he tersely ordered over TEAMCOM, “Blue Team: go-go-go!”

One by one, they slid out of the shakily rising Pelican, each of them spreading themselves wide open for maximum air resistance to slow their velocity down. All but one of the Spartans of Blue Team had the modular armor lock shielding. Only Linda had opted for the modular cloaking, and even though he had clearly seen Linda jump out, taking the NOVA bomb with her, she had immediately activated the cloaking device. John wasn’t sure if she was still in the center of their scattered formation.

It was working as the avian Flood tried to match the speed at which the Spartans were planet bound and tried to pick them off. None of them fired their weapons at the avian forms, for they just hurtled past the forms and splattered those who tried to intercept their trajectories.

“Chief, I hope you know what you’re doing…” Cortana said as the howls of the wind rushing past him screamed through his external speakers, to which he half-muted.

“Trust me,” he said. “I’ve done this before.” He didn’t add that he had actually ridden a piece of scrap hull through the atmosphere and down into the Earth…and barely survived. That jump to Earth had severely tested the limits of his luck. At least this jump was closer to the ground and it was air instead of plasma rushing over him. Over TEAMCOM, he said, “Set ballistic gels to overpressure just before impact.” To Cortana, he asked, “How many kilometers are we from the ground?”

“Two,” she crisply replied. “I’ve also got a rough topography scan. Adjust course by ten degrees and head towards that fuzzy patched area just before those white-capped mountains. It’s matching profiles of terrain-like swamp areas and will cushion the landing. Come in at twenty-five degrees and we won’t be too stuck in the muck.”

He did as Cortana suggested and uploaded a nav marker to the HUD, saying over TEAMCOM, “We’re aiming for that. Come in too steep, you’ll get stuck. Come in too shallow, you’ll bounce right off. Twenty to twenty-five degrees and the swamp should give enough cushions. Activate modular shields at two hundred meters from the ground. Linda, get on our six. You’re riding in behind. Curl up and ride it out.”

Burning green winks of acknowledgement flashed across his HUD as he slowly counted down the distance from their incoming trajectory to their landing sight. He barely heard the angry screech of an avian form charging straight at him, but it was roughly cut off as his speed and trajectory tore straight through the strange creature’s head. Many more tried to attack them, but none were successful, though John was slightly worried.

Their impact into the ground would most likely put them out of commission for a few precious seconds. He could only hope that with a lot of luck, Flood-forms on the ground did not lurk in the swamp.

“Less than a thousand meters, Chief,” Cortana said. “Good luck.”

At two hundred meters, the Master Chief curled up into a tight ball and activated his modular shield, feeling the complete lockdown of his armor. Seconds later, he hit the swampy muck with a great enough force to knock the breath out of him…and slammed to a grinding, squelching halt.

For a slow, agonizing second, he couldn’t see anything as stars filled his vision, and then he heard the faint voice of Cortana ringing in his ear, “Chief! Chief! Can you hear me?”

He took in a ragged breath as his armor rebooted and systems diagnostics scrolled through. Nothing except for the complete drain of his modular shield that was sluggishly trying to recharge, was damaged. He recalled Sgt. Johnson’s comment of a flying brick and grimly smiled; that kind of landing was very lucky. “I can hear you, Cortana,” he said, yanking his limbs out from the muck before he yanked his assault rifle out of the muck with him. His grenades and SMGs were still surprisingly secured to his waist

“Thank goodness. I thought I lost you,” she quietly replied.

“Blue Team, report,” he said over TEAMCOM.

Except for being rattled around, all members of Blue Team reported in green and functional. Linda had managed to skip and bounce off a couple of the Spartans to slow her momentum down and had emerged from the muck relatively unscathed. The package was not damaged. However, all of their modular pieces were having a great deal of trouble trying to recharge. Their slight advantageous boost in combat was gone.

“I’m getting a reading of an anomaly beyond those mountains, but I can’t be too sure. It could be the radiological signal from the Elite’s bomb or it could be something else,” Cortana spoke up. “We should take a look.”

John knew that they could just plant Blue Team’s NOVA right now and set the timer, but if they could also recover the Elites’ bomb, it would prove to be quite advantageous. However, he would never take the easy way out and leave the rest of the Spartans and Elites hanging out to dry. He also knew that he wouldn’t put it past the Forerunners’s technology to be left active, but he knew the dangers. There was a great chance that a Gravemind lurked all over the place, most likely at the anomaly area…though the prospect of setting off a NOVA in the Gravemind’s face sounded slightly appealing. The ultimate question running through his mind was: was it worth the risk?

“Can you pick up on the other NOVAs?” he asked as he tried to maneuver through the squelching, foul-smelling mud as best as possible to help his teammates up. His priority was the teams and their packages. So far, there was nothing in the expanse that surrounded this rotting stench of a place, and none of the avian Flood-forms that they had hurtled through were dive bombing them yet.

“Affirmative,” Cortana replied. “Triangulating Red Team’s NOVA signature from the bounce off the ships in space, it seems to be coming from over the mountains, past that gully and on the flat salt beds. It’s a weak signal, Chief, but I think most of Red Team is alive. I’m also getting a faint signal on Green Team’s NOVA, but nothing from life signs. It’s also in the area where I detected the anomaly.”

“What about the Elites?”

“Battlenet is too full of chatter for me to isolate right this minute. Be advised, there may be hostile Covenant ground forces mixed in with these indigenous life forms.”

“Blue Team, fall to formation beta,” he ordered over TEAMCOM. “Our destination is over those mountains. There may be possible additional hostile Flood-form Covenant forces on the ground. Our priority is to retrieve Green Team’s NOVA from the Flood. Blue-Two, you’re in charge of our package. Cortana, find us the easiest path possible through the mountains.”

Acknowledgement lights winked across his HUD as John and his team cleared the wet muck, scattered to a loose formation, and double-timed it to the foothills of the enormous white-capped mountains that loomed in the distance. The Master Chief had no doubt that even with the treacherous terrain they were going to pass through, a horde of Flood was already between them and their objective.

 

* * *

 

0950, September 14, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Forerunner System \ Operation NOVA: + 9 minutes.

 

It had to be pure dumb luck that only Red Team’s Pelican managed to touch down on the ground safely while so many other teams fell to the swarm of avian Flood forms. Fred couldn’t shake that feeling off as he and the rest of Red Team scrambled off the Pelican and into the open.

Thick, dry, flaky salt crystals crunched beneath his boots as he quickly jogged from the shadow of the Pelican with his rifle raised and pointed towards the sky, wary and ready for any Flood forms trying to attack them from the air. Red-Two had immediately split off to the left, while Red-Three and Red-Four took to the right. Red-Six was the next one out of the Pelican, peeling off to cover Red-Two’s flank, and the last was Red-Five, carrying the package in a secured satchel.

Fred squinted a bit as he looked up, but try as he might he could not see the Pelicans that had carried the other Spartan teams. He could not even see the Covenant transports. All that marred the skies were the enormous spherically bulbous and grotesque forms of the Flood that kept shooting out streams of infection forms towards something beyond the mountains that surrounded this salt flat and the gully-valley that their Pelican had roared over before finding this landing spot.

“Kilo three-two-three to Red Leader,” his COM crackled as the pilot of the Pelican, with the call-sign of Gravedigger, voice sounded. “We’re headed back towards the barn. Give us a ring when you need a dust off.”

“Copy,” he replied. “Thanks, Gravedigger.”

“No problem, sir. Good hunti--”

The ground beneath the Spartans suddenly lurched and not a split second later, something enormous exploded out of the flat bed, scattering and throwing them a few meters away from the eruption point. The terrified shouts and screams of Gravedigger and her co-pilot didn’t even transmit over COM for a second as whatever had shot out of the ground engulfed and crushed the Pelican.

Rocks and dirt pelted Fred as he staggered up and swung his rifle in the direction of the Pelican, only to see a towering _thing_ rise to over twenty-meters and continue to climb. Even with dust and flakes of salt choking the air, the creature that had burst out of the ground was covered in enormous scales of a dull grey color, but it was still rising that he couldn’t even see what its head looked like.

He opened fire at the thing as he shouted over TEAMCOM, “Fall back! Fall back to the gully!” Even before he called for a retreat, he had already placed a nav marker on the rough topography that Cortana had managed to transmit to all Spartans before loosing contact with Blue Team.

A subsonic scream suddenly tore through his ears as he felt it rumble through his bones, causing him to stumble back a bit, though he did notice that his rifle was dinging the thing, it was not doing much damage. It was a waste of a clip as he ejected the spent clip and slammed in a new one. He spotted Tom through the raining dirt, falling to the ground. Lucy was right next to the young Spartan, and she immediately tried to heft him up and drag him out of the way of some incoming rock chunks. Fred doubled back and yanked Tom off the ground as the _scream_ came again, shaking more globules of debris onto them. However, accompany the new round of raining earth was something that splattered against their shields for a moment, hissing before he noticed quite a visible drop in his shield meter.

As soon as Tom was on his feet, the three of them turned and sprinted as fast as they could for the gully marked by the nav marker. He could already see Kelly ahead of the pack, stopping only to fire off a few rounds from her rifle when suddenly; screeches filled the air…along with a roaring sound as a million flapping wings of the avian Flood form blackened the already debris-filled skies. But the Flood weren’t attacking any of the Spartans who had automatically turned their rifles to the new threat. Instead, the horde of avian Flood seemingly charged towards the thing that had exploded out of the ground.

“Go!” he shouted over TEAMCOM.

They sprinted towards the upwards slope that would take them out of the salt flats, and seconds later, dashed over a large hill and onto a steep, gravelly incline down to what looked like a boggy-muddy section. However, there was an overhang in the area that shielded them from most of the view of the sky. Kelly was already over the hill, and had planted herself against the incline, rifle poked out and watching the air as hordes of the avian Flood streamed past them. While Tom and Lucy slid down the incline a bit, Fred turned and planted himself next to Kelly, seeing the last two members of their team coming towards them.

Only one of them was running and his HUD identified Red Six carrying a severely wounded Red Five. As soon as Red Six dashed over the ridge and slid half-way down the slippery slope, did Fred finally focus his attention on the _thing_ that had unexpectedly erupted out of the salt flat. The monstrous creature was enormous, with a serpentine body longer than thirty meters covered in dull grey scales. However, its head was another story; multiple mandibles snapped opened and closed, revealing several concentric circles of large serrated-looking teeth that he could only guess that it was as long as his forearm, if not longer. Green-brown mucus dripped down its mandibles and the stalks that seemed to be near the tip of the mandibles as it swung around, slinging spits of the mucus towards the avian Flood that had surrounded it like carrion feeders. The creature was still emitting a subsonic scream, bit it was not as bone-rattling as it had been when he had first heard it…at least not from this distance.

“Sir, what is it?” Kelly whispered, as she peered over her rifle and at the creature.

“I have no idea,” he replied, making sure that his suit’s video recorder was getting a very good shot of the creature, despite the dark clouds of avian Flood surrounding it. “It doesn’t look like its Flood-controlled…”

“If the Flood does control it…we’re screwed,” Tom replied, half-belly crawling his way up the steep slope while trying not to slip down further into the gravel.

“Two, keep me posted on that thing. We’re going to move out in a few minutes. Three and Four, scout out the area.” he said to them as he turned and slid the rest of the way down the steep incline and onto a semi-solid part of the boggy-mud flatland.

“Aye, sir,” Kelly replied while Tom and Lucy winked acknowledgement lights.

Fred turned his attention to the prone and unconscious Red Five, Liam, one of the two SPARTAN-I.Is on the team, who was being tended to by Red Six, known to him and the others only by the codename of Falcon. He didn’t even need to ask Falcon the condition of the other Spartan as he saw that almost the entire right leg up to the knee of the Spartan was eaten away by acid that was still covering some places and still eating into the flesh. The acid must’ve come from the creature and was probably the same thing that had caused Fred’s own shields to significantly drop when he was hit. Liam’s left leg was patchy in places, as was parts of his body where his armor had completely melted away by the acid from the creature. The unconscious Spartan’s biosigns were also steadily dropping, despite the attempts that had been made to cauterize and clean the wounds, along with the generous application of biofoam. Under the circumstances, Fred knew that Liam would not survive another hour unless immediate advanced medical care was administered, which they did not have the means of getting to.

Miraculously though, the NOVA package that Liam had been carrying was still intact and was sitting next to the flamethrower and rifle that the first generation Spartan had been carrying. Despite the unease that Fred or any of the other Spartans got whenever they were near Falcon, his seemed to have completely disappear as he watched the mysterious Spartan briefly tend to Liam. But only for that instant, for when the Spartan looked back up, completely unreadable by body language or by the polarized faceplate, the uneasy feeling crept back into his mind.

He pushed it aside and opened a private COM channel to the mysterious Spartan. “How fast can you move, if you carry Five?”

Silence answered him over COM for a long moment before Falcon carefully turned the unconscious Liam slightly to his side and gestured to the back, where the tiny fusion generator in the armor was. Even without words, he understood the gesture and meaning: Falcon was suggesting that carrying Liam was going to hamper their mission – the Spartan was dying and would soon be a dead weight to all of them. It was better for them to incinerate the body now than later.

He refused to leave behind a teammate, but he also saw the logic in the premature incineration. They had no way of getting Liam back to the ships without endangering the crew, and there was no guarantee that the Pelican that transported Liam back would even make it into or out of the atmosphere, considering how hard it had been for the other teams to land. “What can you give him to ease his passing?”

“Nothing,” Falcon replied, voice oddly neutral and scratchy enough that he still couldn’t tell what gender the Spartan was.

Fred hated the facts presented before him, but it was the only option they had. They could not jeopardize this mission by having any Flood form, inoculated or not, possessing any of the Spartans. He opened TEAMCOM and said, “Two, go join Three and Four. Take the medic kit with you. We’ll catch up to you.”

One wink of acknowledgement flashed across his HUD as Kelly slid the rest of the way down, grabbed the medic kit, and treaded quickly but carefully through the muddy bog. With Falcon holding the unconscious Spartan on his side, Fred opened up the tiny access panel and input the sixteen-digit code that would overload the tiny reactor. A count down of one minute popped up on his HUD as he closed the panel and Falcon eased the unconscious Spartan back onto the boggy ground.

While Fred hefted the extra assault rifle and few clips, Falcon took the NOVA bomb and the flamethrower. Both of them hurried away from the area as quickly as they could. Seconds before they caught up with the rest of Red Team, a rumble could be felt through the ground as Liam’s armor overloaded and incinerated the Spartan and set most of the boggy area on fire.

“Sir, I caught a weak transmission signal that’s possibly from Green Team’s NOVA beacon,” Tom said when they were finally gathered together.

“No hostile contacts for two kilometers ahead of us,” Kelly said over TEAMCOM, to which Lucy also nodded her agreement.

“All right,” he said, giving them a curt nod. “Tom, take point and get us to that beacon. We need to secure that NOVA.”

Four winks of acknowledgement flashed across his HUD. None of his Spartans asked about Liam, for they all knew the price that would be paid when they had accepted the mission. Fred didn’t even know if any of the other teams had survived, since it was hard to get a transmission to bounce from the ships in space to ground. Now, it was a race against time for them to make sure that the Flood did not acquire any of the other teams’ NOVA bombs.

 

* * *

 

1000, September 14, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Forerunner System \ Operation NOVA: + 19 minutes.

 

Rotted flesh splattered over the Arbiter as the brightly glowing blue plasma grenade stuck to the combat Flood form that had been charging at him, exploded. Two flame-covered Flood forms rushed past him before falling dead, as one of the other Sangheili on this small strike team threw another glowing red flame grenade into the horde that was lumbering towards them.

He continued the fire his dual plasma rifle’s rounds into the horde, slowly cutting each down as more Flood forms caught on fire. These forms had no weapons on them and were just mindlessly charging him and the others, but they were quite persistent about it. They would not be able to hold this position for long, yet they had to break through the Flood ranks.

The pilot of the transport had immediately followed the Pelican containing one of the teams that had been overwhelmed by the avian Flood, dropping the Arbiter and his team near the crash site before being destroyed by an enormous flock of avian Flood. Now, he and his team were surrounded by Flood, but they had to push through. They had to secure the Human-made bomb.

Not two meters in front of the Arbiter and in the front and middle lines of the advancing horde suddenly exploded in spectacular fashion as Flood went flying up into the air in wet, pulpy masses. Through the mess, he saw the barely perceptible form of one of the many what the Humans had termed ‘Spartans’. One of them had fired off two projectile explosives and the barrels from where the explosives left were still smoking.

“ _Charge_!” he shouted to his comrades, as he sheathed the dual plasma rifles and withdrew his sword. Activating it, he sprang up from his crouch, just as a Flood combat form hurled itself at him. He merely side stepped and vertically sliced the thing up before ducking and pivoting to ram the blade up and into another combat form. He kept his forward momentum up while slicing sideways, and moved towards the allies as the others beside him cleared the path as best as they could.

He stabbed another combat form, this time looking like a grotesque, deformed version of the Humans, and ripped the rifle out of its dead hands before swinging the sword in front of him to block several bullets from another combat form. In the split second pause between the Flood form loading more bullets into its weapon, he threw the rifle with enough force to embed itself into the Flood form before splashes of plasma turned his attention towards another enemy.

Two more screams of the explosive projectiles being launched sailed past his head and detonated on the ground a few meters away from him, striking down several Flood forms, temporarily clearing their backs. He and the others surged forward, and as soon as they caught up with their allies, the one in charge of the designated ‘Green’ team, a female Human Spartan, gave a quick lateral cut with her hand.

“Charges set, detonation in fifteen seconds,” one of the Spartans said.

“Let’s move, peoples!” the leader of the team shouted.

“ _May their fires burn the enemy to cinders_ ,” he muttered under his breath as he and his team sprinted after the Spartans, whose destination looked like the faintly domed structure he remembered catching a glimpse of before the Flood horde had descended upon them. He knew that some type of energy of some sort was producing that shield. If that source was still active, then hooking up the Human-made bomb to the source would be greatly advantageous.

Exactly fifteen standard seconds later, the ground beneath them rumbled as the explosives rigged up to the crashed Human transport exploded. However, now that the enemies behind them were taken care of, there were the enemies in front to deal with. The Arbiter sheathed his sword and pulled out both his plasma rifles, calmly aiming both at the incoming line of Flood that stood between them and the structure.

“Green Team Leader,” he calmly said as the screeches from the incoming horde threatened to blow his eardrums, “Move your people out of the path.” To his team, he said, “ _Unleash the hybrids!_ ”

Twin streaks of golden light lanced out from either side of the Arbiter as Rtas’Vadam and Nusa’Granum, each carrying the hybrid weapon that was a cross between the fuel rod gun and the explosive weapon that the Humans were firing earlier, fired their weapons. Their proximity to the Humans earlier made them unable to utilize the weapon’s full capacity, but now, with just the Flood horde between them and the structure, they were free to loose.

The entire Flood horde within a radius of three standard units of each impact site from the weapons was instantly vaporized while within nine standard units, everything else, including foliage was set on fire. Nodding his satisfaction at the work that the Huragoks had produced, he ignored the split-second dumbfounded stops of the Humans and charged on ahead. Indeed the Huragoks had done their job well…they would be aptly rewarded, if he and the others survived.

 

* * *

 

1117, September 14, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Forerunner System \ Operation NOVA: + 1 hour 36 minutes.

 

“Holy hell, I have got to get me more of these…” John heard Douglas quip over TEAMCOM as the blinding after effects of the explosive hybrid weapon, a cross between a fuel rod gun and a rocket launcher, was seen by the Spartans of Blue Team through polarized faceplates.

He had to admit, it was a spectacularly devastating sight, as the weapon vaporized anything within a two-and-a-half meters radius and incinerated everything else within a seven-meter radius. It had even gouged quite a nice one meter crater at the impact point. The only thing that marred John’s admiration of how powerful the weapon was was the smell of charbroiled flesh.

However, he cut short his admiration as he quickly surveyed the field below where he and the rest of Blue Team were perched. It was still bitingly cold up here where the frost was a danger to their weapons, but now with the way down relatively cleared, he gave the signal to move ahead. They slipped like shadows across the snow and ice, sliding quickly down, past the charred bodies and the melted snow until they landed just inside the beginning of the temperate zone.

Massive amounts of foliage obscured their view of what was below, but John had gotten a good look at what was inside this valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains. An energy dome was covering some sort of Forerunner structure that was a few kilometers away from the flat ground they were headed towards. Unfortunately, a horde of Flood stood between them and their destination. Cortana had also pinpointed Green Team’s NOVA beacon within the protected dome. Unfortunately, with the massive amount of life forms and no proper satellites to bounce signals off to see if any of the other Spartans or Elites was alive, Cortana could not get a reading. Long range team to team COM was also quite useless with the amount of strange electromagnetic interference, most likely generated by the energy dome.

However, where there was an energy dome, there was sure to be a network, and if they could get Cortana in, then communications would sure to be better…and there was the potential of salvageable Forerunner technology, which John was sure that would aide in their battle against the Flood. It was also a good place to sync up Blue Team’s own NOVA bomb. He was aware that time was of the essence and that the fleet in space could only hold off so much against such an overwhelming force.

Infrared and thermal views were completely useless in this environment and so was motion tracker, but Cortana whispered in his ear, saying, “Curious…Flood lines are moving away from our position…”

“Eyes sharp,” he said over TEAMCOM. “We’re getting Flood movement.”

Winks of acknowledgement covered his HUD as he quickly but quietly slipped through the dense forest, careful that his steps were not cracking any stray branches on the ground. The others around him scattered like shadows, as he kept his rifle trained side to side.

Minutes later, he suddenly stopped as he saw a very slight movement from behind a rather large tree trunk. Slipping into the shadows of another tree trunk near where he saw movement, he cautiously peeked out and saw the distinct shadow of a long-ranged Flood form that shot large spikes out of its body. He remembered from his encounter on the beta version of Installation 04 that these buggers were notorious for scuttling quite fast out of harm’s way and repositioning themselves. It didn’t help that their spikes could be launched faster than a Brute Spiker.

“Contact, long range Flood,” he whispered over TEAMCOM.

“Two of them here, Lead,” Blue Six whispered.

“I have three,” Blue Two confirmed.

“They probably have them set up from here until the end of the forest,” he surmised, judging from the strange pattern that the Flood was most likely implementing. It was an odd move for the Flood to cover their backs, for they never had the coherence to organize such a defensive position…unless…there was a very likely chance that there was a Gravemind somewhere on this planet controlling the Flood actions. “Hold position.”

“Cortana, is the Flood retreating or are they attacking?” he asked.

“My guess is as good as yours, Chief,” she replied. “There’s too many lifeforms in this area for me to tell.”

“Can you get a reading on the long range Flood forms in this area?”

“Give me a moment…scatter pattern as best as I can estimate looks like this,” Cortana replied, and a small map showed up on the HUD, to which he sent to the others on Blue Team. To even sprint through would be suicide – they’d get impaled by all sides before they could even make it through the forest’s edge…unless… He quickly looked up and around. Yes, the trees were all overgrown close enough that strong branches grew tall and were quite interlaced with each other. It would hopefully provide them a good enough cover for them to bypass the long ranged units.

“Start climbing, Blues,” he said over TEAMCOM. “Run and don’t stop, even after you clear the forest. Three, as soon as you clear the forest, unleash hell on the horde that is most likely waiting for us. The rest of us will do the clean up.”

A split second after all had winked their acknowledgement lights, John moved into action. He quickly scaled the enormous tree he had been hiding behind and as soon as he found a solid branch that was about two meters above the ground, he sprinted. Running through the trees with branches whipping at him felt just like one of the many obstacle courses that Chief Mendez had put the Spartans through when they were children. Except that this one had enormous spikes shooting up at him.

Not even seven seconds after he started his sprint, he heard a faint whoosh and twang of the spikes launched by the ranged Flood forms hit tree branches and trunks. Splinters of wood and leaves scattered all over the place as he ducked and narrowly avoided several spikes on a parabolic trajectory. His ranged tracker said that there were only five hundred meters left of the forest.

“Chief…the forest is thinning out…” Cortana worriedly said.

“I know,” he said, pivoting in several places on thinning branches while dodging several more hails of spikes that impaled several branches and trunks of the trees he had just vacated merely a micro second ago. He could see the edge of the forest starting to creep up as he continued forward. Only three hundred meters to go… “Hold on!”

He sprinted as fast as he could, well aware that his tree-top path was going to run out before he cleared the forest, and leapt the last hundred meters. A shower of spikes accompanied him as he landed on the muddy ground, tucked himself into a roll and briefly triggered the modular shielding. It didn’t lock down his armor and the hum was not there, but there was just enough charge in the somewhat broken modular unit to deflect all the spikes that headed straight for him.

That was enough for him to bring his assault rifle up as he continued to run just as a golden beam lanced out from Douglas’s hybrid weapon straight at the horde of Flood a few hundred meters away on the flat plains that had their backs turned. The Master Chief’s faceplate polarized to maximum as he charged, with the rest of his team, towards the pole-axed Flood. The Spartans mowed down what was left of the back line of the Flood before two more lances of golden beams impacted the horde, this time coming from well beyond the front lines of the Flood.

“Good to see you, Blue Team,” John’s COM crackled as he heard the cool, calm voice of Lieutenant Janissary James, Green Team’s leader say.

With all the debris and smoke in the air, John could barely make out the fuzz of people beyond the shield dome, but it was clear that they were firing at the Flood forms trying to break into the dome.

Instead of breaking ranks like so many front line Covenant units, especially Grunts and Jackals, when faced with an overwhelming crossfire, the grotesque forms of Flood stood their ground. They were quickly cut down by the combined firepower of Blue and Green teams.

John and Blue Team hurried inside the shield with minimal resistance between their armor and the interface of the shield and came face to face with Lieutenant James, Ash, Olivia, and two Elites. The two Elites were each holding the hybrid explosive weapon, still smoldering from the recent firings.

“Status?” he asked over SQUADCOM.

“Green Two and Five, the Arbiter, and the other Elite are on the other side of this structure, making sure that Covenant isn’t ambushing our rear. Shield’s good at holding them back for a bit before either combined firepower weakens a part or brute force bashes a hole. Bomb’s still with us and we’ve been trying to get it hooked up into the network. Green Six and Seven didn’t make it out of the crash,” the Lieutenant said.

“Michael and Louis…” Blue Five, a SPARTAN I.I sharpshooter named Julia, whispered, but then said, “Sorry, sir.”

“Chief, I’m picking up nodes all around this place…looks like there still an active network I can connect to…if I can get inside, I can possibly get the bombs connected to the power source,” Cortana said.

“Show me,” John said, and a moment later, modules and markers appeared over his HUD.

“We’ve got incoming on this side! Estimate at least a hundred combat forms, fifty long range forms, several carriers and tanks, and two globe floaters,” Jerome’s calm voice suddenly cut into SQUADCOM, though John heard the underlying stress beneath the calm demeanor.

“Blue Three, -Four, -Five, on me. The rest of you, stay here and watch our backs. Seven, get Cortana to a node and get the bombs set up as close to the largest energy source in the structure as possible,” he ordered, as he sent Blue Seven the schematic and took the chip containing Cortana out of his suit’s AI interface. The cool feeling left his mind as he handed the chip over to Blue Seven, a SPARTAN I.I called Neal, who was also a technologist expert concerning several major nuclear devices in the UNSC.

“Copy,” several voices confirmed over SQUADCOM. John, Douglas, and two of the four SPARTAN I.Is on Blue Team, Alexei and Julia, sprinted past overgrown fallen columns and vine-covered angular structures of old as they scrambled to the other side. Over the localized SQUADCOM, he said, “We’re coming, Green-Two. Hang on.”

As soon as they cleared the ruins and saw what exactly was coming towards them, on the other side, the Master Chief said, “Three, light those carriers up. The rest, let’s lay down the welcome mat.”

“Consider it done, Chief,” Douglas replied, immediately staying on the higher ground for maximum trajectory to make sure that the explosive lances reached the cluttered Flood carrier forms lurking in the back of the hundred plus horde of combat forms lumbering towards the shield.

John could see the two of the many Flood globes that had been spitting out a massive amount of infection forms floating high in the sky nearly two kilometers away, and they were getting closer. They did not have any long-ranged weapon that could reach that distance to shoot down those forms that high up. With the amount of globular Flood that filled the skies on the way into the planet, Longswords, even Banshees were already having their hands full. The shield would hold against only so much, and the amount of force he remembered the jets of infection forms released from the globular Flood would instantly rip straight through.

“Arbiter and Green-Five, I need you two to funnel them into this area,” he said as he checked the formation of the land versus where the shield was covering them. “Let them pass through in waves. We’ll hold the line here.”

Not a moment later, two golden lances of highly volatile explosive projectiles flew from Douglas’s weapon shot straight through the shield and impacted along the backlines of the incoming horde. Fire and fury bloomed among the Flood horde and spread as the monstrous creatures howled and charged, their thunderous footsteps shaking the ground. John even felt it through his armor like a small seismic rumble and called over SQUADCOM, “Hold…”

As soon as the first of the combat forms leapt into and pushed through the shield, he shouted, “Fire!”

Hails of bullets from rifles, SMGs, plasma rifles, shotguns, plasma pistols – all sorts of weaponry filled the air as the misshapen forms of Humans, Covenant, even the strange creatures from the planet possessed by the Flood fired back. The Spartans scattered for cover, and John ducked behind one halved, moss-covered column, reloading his rifle with another fresh clip before popping back out for a quick second to shred two combat forms.

A storm of glowing pink needles tracked him as he rolled and ducked into a series of interlinked structural debris, hearing the crystalline impacts mere centimeters from where he was. He popped back out as soon as the crystalline breakage fell dead and unleashed a quarter of a clip into the owner of the needler before raking the half a clip into several of the grossly deformed Flood cohorts of the Flood-possessed Grunt. Bullets impacted his shields, draining them slightly as he trained his rifle on the combat form’s shadow that was overhead of him. A quick burst immediately dropped the form like a stone, splattering him in the rotting mucus and flesh of a fallen Marine.

Not a half minute later, he was starting to run low on rifle clips and immediately switched straight to the SMGs strapped to his waist. Staggering his rate of fire, he swept each weapon back and forth at the horde while advancing position a bit. The bodies were starting to pile up, but there seemed to be no signs of slowing for the Flood forms. By now, he should have at least gotten a confirmation of systems access from Cortana, but there was silence over the COM.

“Heads up, peoples!” Lieutenant James’s voice crackled over COM, a bit distorted. “We got incoming on this side too!”

John finished downing several more combat forms before knocking a deformed Jackal back and raked his SMG over its corpse, ensuring that it was quite dead before glancing up for a brief split second. The globular Flood forms were definitely closer, and even with the distortion from the shield, they were most likely in range to start firing.

Moments later, the one of the two globular air carriers he had glanced at suddenly exploded, showering pieces and chunks of dead Flood carcasses all over the battlefield. It was quickly followed by the second one also shattering as several enormous impacts shook the ground beneath the Spartans and Flood.

“Thought you guys might need a hand,” Fred’s voice crackled over SQUADCOM.

The corners of John’s lips quirked up in a faint smile as more rumbles shook the ground from missile or projectile impacts, scattering the Flood forces. He thought he briefly saw a flash of a smiley face across his HUD from Douglas, but left it alone as he laid down some fire from his SMGs at a few scattering Flood before seeing the faint outline of what looked like to be a Scorpion-class tank through the thick smoke and fire burning all over the place.

This time, instead of being the fearless and in John’s opinion, mindless, husks of zombies that did not scatter with terror like the Covenant forces so often did – they did this time. The Spartans, along with some surprising reinforcement from ODSTs, cut down the fleeing Flood with lethal efficiency that the battle was over in less than a minute.

As the rest of the Marines and Spartans pushed through the shield, which definitely looked much weaker now after all it had been through, the tank struggled a bit before whoever was in it gunned it and shoved the enormous machine through. John counted only four of the six Spartans assigned to Red Team among the reinforcements, but as soon as the Scorpion was parked near the base of the Forerunner structure, he saw the fifth member of the team, Red-Four, Lucy, pop out from the hatch. The young Spartan scrambled down to exchange a few gestures with one of the ODSTs before the ODST replaced her in the Scorpion’s main gunner seat.

“Chief, they’re running here,” Lieutenant James’s voice crackled over SQUADCOM, “shall we pursue?”

“Negative on that, Green Lead,” he replied, reloading his SMGs and hooking both to his waist carriers before he picked up a couple of half-empty assault rifle clips from the ground. “Police what weapons you can find and start reinforcing the structural barriers. This battle is just getting started.”

“Copy,” she replied.

“Thanks for the helping hand, sir,” he said, as he saw Fred approach him, covered quite liberally in mud and Flood entrails, carrying an equally covered shotgun.

“Found the ODSTs on our way here,” Fred said, nodding slightly to the ODSTs. “Several more teams dropped all around the place, but we haven’t been able to get in contact with any others. We got ambushed by a native creature not controlled by the Flood when we landed. Liam didn’t make it…the acid from the creature chewed right through him. The NOVA survived.”

“All right,” he said, nodding. He wanted a status report on the creature that Red Team encountered, but there were more pressing needs right now. “We’re trying to hook up the other two. Cortana should be already in the system, so the other NOVA should go to where Blue-Seven is. I’ll need you to coordinate the defenses on this side of the barrier. Green Leader is already reinforcing the other side.”

“Will do, Chief,” Fred replied, giving a curt nod to him before gesturing for one of the others on Red Team to give John the NOVA bomb and hurried off to coordinate defense.

John hefted the bomb and quickly jogged towards the structure and up the crumbling parts. Pellets of rocks and dirt slid under his boots, but he had a good balance enough to quickly climb the structure towards where he saw the marker for Blue-Seven. As soon as he turned the corner of the overhang on the structure, he saw the first-generation Spartan kneeling in front of the two bombs, wiring a few internal things together. The chip that contained Cortana was on the ground next to him, but instead of the slight glow it had whenever Cortana occupied it, the chip was inactive.

“Status, Blue-Seven?” he asked.

“Still working on it, Chief,” the distracted voice of Neal replied. “Cortana’s in the system…though she hasn’t said a word to me yet since I sent her in about five minutes ago.”

The Master Chief found that really strange as he dropped the third NOVA next to Blue-Seven. Cortana usually connected to a system easily, even if it was Forerunner, and always provided some status to him or to anyone after a second or so, but this delay was really odd. He cycled through to the COM frequency that she usually spoke to him at and tentatively asked, “Cortana?”

Silence answered him for a few long seconds before he heard the faint, familiar voice of the AI reply back, “Chief? Is that you?”

“I’m here,” he answered back. “Status? Are you functional?”

“Thank goodness, Chief,” she said, this time in a stronger voice. “It’s so dark in here...so many lost and so many forgotten…but to answer your question, yes, I am fully functional now.”

“Can you interface the NOVAs to the thing that is powering this shield here?”

“Give me a moment,” she replied. “I have established a connection, but it will take some time for me to integrate all three to the power source here. A physical connection would be the best… There’s something in the deep core of this place that’s providing the power, but I can’t find a way to open this structure up to get the bombs physically in here. I don’t think anything that we have will work to blow a hole into the structure.”

“Do what you can, Cortana,” he said, picking up the empty chip and slotting it back into his AI port interface.

“Your faith in me is reassuring,” she said, her voice fading to a whisper as she went about her tasks.

“Demon,” the Arbiter’s voice rumbled over John’s internal speaker as the towering Elite approached, covered in phosphorescent blood, carrying a fully loaded carbine with a needler strapped to one side and a deactivated sword in the other.

“Arbiter,” he said, nodding in acknowledgement.

“Our forces are proving quite victorious up there,” the Arbiter rumbled, turning his gaze skywards. John followed the Elite’s gaze, where through the sun and into the stars, he could barely see the flashes of light of an enormous space battle taking place above. “But now that we’ve angered them down here, they will turn their gazes to us.”

“We only need to hold them off long enough,” he replied, turning his gaze to the NOVAs.

“Chief!” Cortana’s voice suddenly cut into John’s brief moment of contemplation. “We have a problem!”

“What problem?” he asked, taking the assault rifle off his back and held it in his hands, looking warily around from his high vantage point. The Arbiter and Blue-Seven apparently also heard that transmission, as they too snapped alert.

“There’s a construct…in here…actively blocking me in several places…” Cortana said, her voice falling into a distracted, slightly angry tone before turning a bit panicky. “It’s…oh no…it’s summoned Sentinels…Sentinels from all over the place…from Installations Two, Three, Seven…several shield worlds…and from Onyx… They’ll be here before the interface can be finished!”

For the first time, John felt a chill crawl over his body. He had heard and read the reports of the clever and deadly Onyx Sentinels, and he clearly remembered what the deranged 343 Guilty Spark and the Sentinels of Installation 04 and 04b did in their betrayal. Dr. Morales had clearly stated that there would be a few that would not make it off the planet, but the Master Chief intended for everyone to survive. “Blue-Seven, can we arm and set off the bombs right now?”

“Negative, sir,” Neal replied. “The system’s disassembled to the point where either it takes me an hour to put it back together and arm it, or we go forward with the interface.”

“Sentinel ETA, Cortana?” he asked over COM.

There was a very long, pronounced pause over the silent COM and just as John was about to repeat his request, Cortana’s voice came back, saying, “Estimated at half-hour, Chief.”

“That’s how long you have, Seven, to put it back together,” he said to the first-generation Spartan who grimly nodded. To Cortana, he said, “Stop the interface, Cortana. I’m taking you out of the system. Standby for--”

Suddenly, the solid stone floor beneath the Master Chief’s boots violently shook and an instant later, crumbled as if it did not exist at all. Even with the lightning quick reflexes that he possessed and augmented by his armor, John was not fast enough to catch Blue-Seven from falling as he himself leapt for the edge of the sudden crater that formed below those on the top of the Forerunner structure. He scrabbled for purchase as he felt himself sliding down, but it was all for naught as all-too-familiar looking elongated tentacles of a sickly green-brownish color shot up all around him. He was swiftly knocked off his precious hand hold and fell into the black abyss with the sounds of a familiar enemy droning in his mind.

“Of machine and nerve, faith and flesh, do I greet again. I offer no forgiveness or mercy, for this time, neither of you shall emerge from this grave of the ancestors I have consumed!” bellowed the Gravemind.

 

~*~*~*~


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

1200, September 14, 2576 (Military Calendar) \ Forerunner System \ Operation NOVA: + 2 hour 19 minutes.

 

“Chief! John!” Fred heard Kelly’s distinct voice shouted over COM, just as one of the Elites grunted, “Arbiter!” while another few voices chimed in with shouts of surprise for other Spartan that was working on the bombs, and still others shouted their surprise, his voice among them.

Their shock didn’t last very long, for the instant they saw the structure collapse inwards from the top down, a multitude of slime-covered green-brown tentacles shot out from the ground and from various parts of the collapsing structure. Fred’s augmented reflexes kicked into action as he leapt and dodged the incoming elongated missiles, hearing the cries of agony rip through COM as some of the unlucky ODSTs were skewered through by the tentacles.

“Jan!” one of the first-generation Spartans yelled over SQUADCOM, just as the torrent of Flood-borne tentacles suddenly retreated as the structure completely collapsed to the ground.

“Of machine and nerve, faith and flesh, do I greet again. I offer no forgiveness or mercy, for this time, neither of you shall emerge from this grave of the ancestors I have consumed!” the voice bellowed _inside_ Fred’s mind, rattling him as he shakily stood while pushing the debris off that had fallen on him.

He knew that voice, and apparently, so did a few others. There was definitely a Gravemind here, and there was no doubt in Fred’s mind that those sickly-looking brown tentacles had belonged to the creature. It was under the structure, and now it had John, the Arbiter, and Blue-Seven trapped, with no way of the others getting to them.

“Hold the line,” he ordered the group that was positioned here as he hurriedly ran towards the debris. His armor could still weakly detect John and the Arbiter’s biosigns, but of Blue-Seven, he could find nothing. He tried to contact them, saying, “Chief? Arbiter? Can you hear me? Repeat, can you hear me?”

Long, agonizing seconds passed before he heard a grunt through COM and John reply, “We’re all right. Seven’s injured. We still have the bombs. Something drew the Gravemind away, but whatever it is, it’ll do for now. We’re going to hook the bombs up. Hold the fort. We’ll try to find a back door out. Acknowledge.”

“Copy,” he replied, and expected Green Leader to do the same, but the COM was silent without Lieutenant James’s reply. “All teams, status report!”

“Three ODSTs killed, five wounded, sir,” the squad leader for the team of ODSTs that he and Red Team had found on the way to this location spoke first.

“Blue-Two and -Six accounted, sir,” Linda’s cool, detached voice sounded through the COM.

“Blue Three, -Four, and –Five are here, sir. Nothing but a bit of a dust-up,” Douglas reported in.

“Reds and the two Greens are fine, sir,” Kelly told him their status.

“Green-Three and –Four copy. Green Leader’s injured and down, sir,” Ash’s voice spoke through SQUADCOM. “Gravemind ran straight through her spine, but she’s alive.”

That was a grievous injury and Fred considered it a miracle that Lieutenant James was even alive. But before he could reply, a blur tackled him to the ground, just as one of the Gravemind’s tentacles lanced out from the earth. It struck the air where his torso should have been, missing him by a few centimeters. As he crashed to the ground, his head hitting the back of his helmet hard enough to briefly see stars, an ear-splitting roar suddenly _howled_ through his mind, shaking his bones. The tentacle disappeared as another roar was heard, this time, rumbling through the earth.

“The Master Chief must’ve really pissed it off,” he dimly heard someone quip over SQUADCOM as he shook his head a bit to clear his senses.

“Sir!” Kelly’s voice broke through COM as Fred rolled over and got up as the seismic event subsided, slightly surprised to see that it had been Falcon who had knocked him out of the way. Said Spartan was merely dusting off and quickly jogged back to the lines without another word. He waved Kelly’s concerned approach away.

Fred quickly looked around – they were definitely spread too thin to cover all areas of the place. Their best chance was to defend from a more stable position, which meant they had to get closer to the structure, and he wasn’t sure that it was entirely stable. The best hope for a fall back position, was through the way Red Team and the ODSTs had plowed through.

He quickly cycled through the frequencies until he came across the channel that Cortana had been speaking through and said, “Cortana, do you copy?”

There was a moment of silence before the AI replied in a slightly tinny tone, “Right here, Lieutenant.”

“Can you get me a stability reading on the structure?”

“Give me a moment…yes. The point in which the Master Chief, Arbiter, and Blue-Seven fell through is at the top, but the cave in seems to have buried the hollow that had formed. Something’s seriously distracting the Gravemind’s attention right now, but everything above should be stable.”

“Good. Thanks,” he replied. Over SQUADCOM, he said, “Get the wounded here. Blue-Four, -Five, -Six, keep the back door open for us. Blue-Two and –Three, and the Elites, set up a perimeter on the east side of the structure. Green Team, set up a perimeter along those west columns. ODSTs and Reds, we’re taking the hill. Get that tank moving to the top.”

“Copy,” a chorus of acknowledgements rang through COM as the Spartans, ODSTs, and Elites moved into action. As much as Fred wanted to take the offensive, they had to sit with defense right now, to hold out as long as possible for the Master Chief and the other two with him to get the bomb set and armed.

Several minutes later, Linda reported back from a long-range scan with her sniper rifle saying, “We have incoming forces about five klicks away. Estimate about a thousand to two thousand combat bodies and continuing to grow. It’s a mix of pure Flood forms and Covenant-possessed ones. Flood has mostly tanks, long-ranged, and combat forms. Carriers and other forms possibly mixed in. Covenant is mostly Brutes and Elites. Unknown if there are other types of Covenant forces, but the possibility is there.”

The shield was obscuring most of the view with its haze, but from the high structural ruins hill perch, Fred could see something of a mass slowly moving towards them. He clicked to SQUADCOM and said, “All teams prepare to defend against incoming enemy forces.”

Cortana’s voice suddenly came over COM, “Lieutenant, I’m going to have to siphon the shield’s energy to give the source a boost to establish a link with the NOVAs.”

“Do it,” he said. “It’s not going to hold long…not with what’s coming. What’s the ETA to bomb set and armed?”

“Fifteen minutes,” the AI replied.

“Sentinels?” he asked, setting a countdown clock for the bomb to be armed for fifteen minutes before sending the information to the others.

“Same ETA, sir,” Cortana said. “Siphoning power in five… four… three… two… one.”

Fred’s faceplate automatically polarized to maximum as the Forerunner structure shield flared brightly for a second before a buzzing sound was heard and it disappeared. Even as his faceplate slowly returned to normal, he and the others were already moving towards attack vectors. Even though the incoming horde was still less than five kilometers away and trudging through the enormous pine-looking forest that covered half of this valley, a long shadow seemed to stretch from the trees to where the Spartans, Elites, and ODSTs were.

A trick of the light? He wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter for the rustling of the trees only three kilometers from where they were standing on the hill had drawn his attention. It felt like Onyx all over again, except this time, with an even greater number of foes, but they only had to defend the place for fifteen minutes – everything after that was up to the bombs.

What emerged from the trees first caused at least one of the ODSTs to exhale a heartfelt expletive over SQUADCOM, as Fred felt his breath catch in his lungs for just a second: lumbering towards the defending groups were at least a dozen pairs of Flood-possessed Hunters, each carrying a two-ton shield and fuel rod cannon. The Hunters were followed closely by an enormous mixed group of Flood-possessed Elites and Brutes. The rest of the Flood emerged from the forest – all of them in pure forms.

 

* * *

 

“Chief!”

“Chief! John!”

“Chief? Arbiter? Can you hear me? Repeat, can you hear me?”

John shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears as his armor quickly rebooted the software and gave a green diagnostics – or at least as green as can be. His modular armor lock was still broken. He shunted aside all pain as he got up and quickly checked on Blue-Seven, seeing that the Arbiter was already stirring and rolling to his feet. A quick check of his weapons told him that his rifle was still on his back and SMGs were still strapped to his waist.

Blue-Seven’s biosign was weak, but the Spartan was stirring, though even with a shake of his head, Blue-Seven still did not have a good biosign. However, John did receive the thumbs up sign, indicating that though the Spartan was injured, he was still functional. John glanced over at the Arbiter, who was dusting himself off and collecting the carbine that had clattered to the floor. The needler was missing.

Glancing over the darkened chamber, he flicked his headlamps on and found the three NOVAs sitting innocently near a large wall of boulders. A cursory inspection told him that for all that the bombs had been through, the outer casings had barely taken any damage in the long fall to hard ground. Now that they were inside the structure, perhaps a physical connection could be done with the bombs.

“We’re all right,” he replied over TEAMCOM. “Seven’s injured. We still have the bombs. Something drew the Gravemind away, but whatever it is, it’ll do for now. We’re going to hook the bombs up. Hold the fort. We’ll try to find a back door out. Acknowledge.”

“Copy,” he heard Fred’s reply, but didn’t hear Lieutenant James’s reply. He was too far underground to get a clear signal to any of those above, but he was confident that either one of the officers would get the job done.

“Cortana, I need a map of this place,” he said over COM. “Can you also pinpoint the central location of the Gravemind?”

“Something’s drawn the Gravemind off--” Cortana began.

“Vengeance for the extension of the sentence that I do not deserve will be mine!” the roar of the Gravemind rattled through John’s ears before a howl seemingly sounded through the walls of this dimly lit place.

“Nevermind…” Cortana quipped as she uploaded a map to the Master Chief’s HUD. “Wait…something _is_ drawing it off. Strange.”

“Fine,” he said. The less he had to deal with the angry and enormous Venus flytrap, the better. “Where’s the central power core?”

“Here,” the AI replied, uploading a small nav marker. The point indicated that it was a few levels up, and a look at the schematic would take them quickly there. However, his tracker showed no contacts so far, but he couldn’t help but feel as if there were many eyes watching him. He had no doubt in his mind that this place was infested with Flood.

“All right, we’ll be there in five,” he told the AI. To Blue-Seven he said, “Can you walk? We need to get here.” He passed the information to both the Arbiter and to Blue-Seven.

“Can do, Chief,” Neal weakly replied, but with some effort, stood and slung the bombs over his shoulder. It didn’t escape the Master Chief’s notice that the Spartan’s hands were shaking, even with a pistol in hand.

“Arbiter, cover our six,” he said, taking the lead as the other Spartan slipped in between them, limping forward.

Up one of the many debris-covered ramps of this strange structure that looked so familiar yet so alien like the Halo rings the three went. John enhanced his audio sensors to maximum while he kept a close eye ahead, letting his head lamp shine all over the place – ceiling included. He did not want to be ambushed by any sort of Flood parasite.

They went up two levels, and before they reached the marker where Cortana had indicated that the central core was there, a door that was locked and in their way. “Cortana, we’ve got a door in the way. Can you unlock it?”

“One mom--”

“Demon,” the Arbiter cut in before the AI could finish her sentence. “Listen.”

The Master Chief listened carefully for a second and heard the distinct scrape of tiny multitudes of legs against the strange metal walls, ceiling, and floor of this place. The Flood parasites were coming, and judging from the sound he heard, there were a lot of infection forms coming. “Cortana, we need it open now,” he said.

“Trying, Chief,” Cortana’s voice came back, slightly strained.

But it was too late, for the popcorn Flood filled the bottom of the ramp as they surged in from the corridors that connected to this path up to the central core. The three of them opened fire at the surge, cutting down as many as they could. They couldn’t back up anymore as the locked door pressed against their backs, and in the distance, John could see the lumbering forms of carriers and tanks start to approach as if they were old friends rushing in to greet them. Further than that, long-ranged Flood forms were starting to array themselves on the ceiling of the place.

“Cortana!”

“Got it!” the AI’s triumphant voice called out, and John barely heard a ping through his external speakers as the three of them suddenly tumbled backwards.

The door swished mercifully closed just as a large surge of infection forms crashed against it and the door pinged red again, completely locked down. John picked himself up as the Arbiter did the same, while Neal knelt on the ground, catching his breath and ensured that the bombs had not been damaged.

As the Master Chief reloaded his rifle, he looked around the enormous dome-shaped room and couldn’t help but feel a chill crawl down his spine. This place looked eerily similar to the control room of Installation 04, except it was in serious decay. There were obvious signs that the Flood had been in this particular chamber, with all the gunk and slime that was left behind, still dripping as if fresh, but there were also eons old signs of scorch marks and other weapons fire. He wouldn’t put it past anything that the Forerunners who had occupied this place had fought a valiant but doomed battle against the Flood in this place.

There was no other sound other than the three of them quietly and slowly making their way across the long catwalk towards the central area where there was a console that was quite active. John kept looking warily around, as did the Arbiter as they carefully crossed the catwalk with Blue-Seven in between the two of them. This was the perfect place for an ambush to knock any one of them over and into the long, dark abyss that waited below.

They reached the center of the chamber without incident, and as Neal dropped the bombs next to the active console, John peeked over the lip of the circular center and saw that there was a very faint light a few hundred meters down from where they were.

“I found the location where the Sentinel broadcast is, Chief,” Cortana spoke up, her hologram resolving onto the floor of the central area, almost in life-like size. “I tried to access it, but _something_ is blocking me…almost as if there is another construct in the system. It also keeps repeating the same word over and over again: ‘Reclaimer’.”

“Where is it?” he asked, activating the map over his HUD again.

A small nav marker appeared and he glanced over the other side of the large shaft towards the door on the far side. There was no way to tell if behind the other locked door, Flood was waiting for them, but he knew that the fleet above would not be able to survive a full on assault by the Sentinels. He was also almost certain that there was a Forerunner construct in this place too, whether a Monitor or not, he wasn’t sure.

“How long is it going to take you to integrate and arm the bombs, Cortana?”

“Less than fifteen minutes, now that we have a physical interface. Unfortunately, that’s also the amount of time that it will take the Sentinels to get here.”

“Do what you can,” he said, giving a curt nod to the injured Blue-Seven, who still had a weak biosign, but was determined to see his duty through. He turned to the Arbiter who merely opened his mandibles at what John could only guess as some sort of wordless expression.

“Open plains in your hunt, Demon,” the Arbiter said, giving a slight nod as he instantly understood what John was going to do. “This one and the artificial construct shall not fall into enemy hands.”

“Chief,” Cortana said, stopping John for a second before he could jog towards the other side. “Be careful.”

“I always am.”

 

* * *

 

Superheated chunks of dirt and fiery glowing stone debris ripped through the air as the Flood-Hunters’ fuel rod cannons gouged another meter-wide-hole into the severely ruined landscape. Fred’s shield flared brightly as he narrowly dodged another green blast from the four Flood-Hunters that had surrounded those still left standing on top of the hill. Pain flared up his left leg through the torn tendons as he pivoted and returned fire, forcing his already painfully dislocated and possibly torn shoulder to keep his aim steady, but he barely felt any of it. All the other teams were in a similar predicament, even if the initial shells from the Scorpion did successfully kill a few of the behemoths.

Said Scorpion was a smoking hulk of machine and wirings, having been completely destroyed within the first ten seconds of the opening salvos.

The first two Flood-Hunter pairs backed up a bit under the overwhelming hail of plasma, needles, and bullets; hunkering down behind their shields. Guttural roars from the other two misshapen beasts thundered through him as the point blank range fire of the flanking two Flood-Hunters slammed through several broken columns and structural ruins as if they were not there, throwing back Kelly, Tom and Falcon from their covers and cleared the entire area of any place to hide.

Fred activated his modular shield and felt his armor lock down just as the overpowering whine of fuel rod cannons sounded right behind him and felt the blast slam into him. Miraculously it held, but the drain on his generator sped up with an enormous overpressure that threatened to dislodge him from the hill. Luckily, the pressure against him suddenly disappeared and an instant later, the armor unlocked and the EMP wave slammed into the two Flood-Hunters, causing the nearest one to tumble down the hill while its mate staggered back.

The staggering Flood-Hunter flailed to regain its balance and for a split second, its shield was lifted above its sickly-looking parasite-infested-orange-eel-colony torso. Fred dove and snatched the nearest plasma grenade on the ground, arming it and sent it into the exposed mass. It exploded with spectacular fashion just as missile screamed past his right ear and into the other Flood-Hunter, who had rolled down the hill. The missile hit dead center of mass and took out a part of the advancing ranks of Flood-Brutes and Flood-Elites.

He got to his feet as he saw Lucy sprint past him with the rocket launcher she carried over her shoulder still smoldering. She had fired the missile and without a pause, she was already reloading and arming another pair.

Fred snatched up his rifle that had been dropped in the initial fight, along with two fragmentation grenades. Arming the grenades, he threw both into the oncoming horde, just as Lucy fired her missiles, giving a split second pause to the oncoming horde. It was enough for Fred to turn his attention to the last two Flood-Hunter pairs as he took aim and peppered the exposed back of one of the two Flood-Hunters that were trying to gang up upon the other three Spartans of Red Team.

As soon as one of the two turned its attention, it was instantly set aflame. It howled wildly and in its death throes, it fired its cannon, clipping Tom and vaporizing half of his left arm off. The third-generation Spartan tumbled to the ground, as both Lucy and Fred advanced on the last Flood-Hunter, its attention taken by the flamethrower wielding Spartan, Falcon.

Kelly barreled into the last Flood-Hunter in the split second the creature had its attention between its collapsing fire-engulfed mate, and the threat that surrounded it, exposing its back towards Lucy who fired off a missile that exploded dead center of the beast and showered the place with charred, mutated flesh of the Flood. As Falcon hurried to Tom, Fred turned his full attention to the incoming Flood-possessed Brutes and Elites. Kelly joined him and Lucy a moment later, covered quite liberally in Flood guts, but otherwise, unharmed, and carried two blood-red plasma rifles in her hands.

Falcon and Tom appeared on the other side of him, and even though Tom’s biosign was showing him to be borderline shock, he was still holding the SMG in his right hand with a steady grip. Falcon had ditched the flamethrower in favor of a fully loaded Brute shot. The incoming horde had stopped three hundred meters from the bottom of the hill, as if waiting for a signal.

“Nothing like a sunny, warm day for a standoff, eh, sir?” Kelly grimly murmured over TEAMCOM.

Fred said nothing in reply as he surveyed the field. Cold anger stayed with him, for the deaths of so many around them…so many dead, yet there was no stopping the enemy who clearly outnumbered and outgunned them. There were at least five Gravity-Hammer wielding Brutes among this particular incoming Flood mass. He checked the mission timer. Seven minutes. The only needed to hold off the mass for seven minutes more.

The skies suddenly darkened as he glanced up to see multiple mucus-covered blobs coming straight towards them. “Scatter!” he shouted over TEAMCOM and leapt forward just as the hiss of acid slapped against his shields, draining them to less than half. It was in that chaotic opening salvo of the next round that the Flood horde charged. Several more acidic globules darkened the skies as the incoming bombs struck the ground, splashing all over the place. The Spartans dodged whenever way they could to avoid both the acid from the Flood-ranged Launchers and the unleashed weapons of the incoming mass.

The rapid whumps of the Brute shot impacted some of the nearest Brutes and Elites, driving them back. “Take out the Hammers first!” he ordered over TEAMCOM. The Flood-Brutes wielding the deadly Gravity Hammers were the main threat they faced now…not that the acid bombs fired from the long-ranged Flood were going to kill them first.

The last two rockets of Lucy screamed past his head and impacted into the middle of the oncoming horde as he fired at the nearest Elite before kicking another one in the guts, unloading half-a-clip into the parasite’s head. The rest of the clip went into the nearest hammer-wielding-Brute, who roared and charged, its deformed lope faster than what it used to be. Fred barely had anytime to dodge under and rolled through as the Flood-Brute swung its hammer down and the shockwave slammed into its allies, blowing at least a large, two-meter radius of flattened and pulped bodies all around the lone Flood warrior. He had the luck of being in the straight-lined back of the shockwave, but still the residual force sent him flying into several Flood forms, knocking them over. Flecks of blood splattered on the inside of his faceplate as the air was forced from his lungs and he coughed.

Before the Brute had time to turn, advance on him, and slam its weapon down on the ground again, its body suddenly shuddered with the multiple impacts of the large blade-tipped weapon. The concussive explosive ripped the creature apart, pushing back several Flood-Elites who were going to jump him as he slammed in a new clip into his rifle and turned to face the horde.

He saw the unwieldy weapon flying in the air towards him, and turned and caught it with his left hand, just in time to swing it in a vicious side arc and slice straight through several combat forms that jumped into the fight. Quickly clipping his rifle to his back, he swung the hammer with both hands now, and the shockwave effect from the hammer activated again as both hands put enough pressure for its sensitive trigger to activate. Slicing downwards, several combat forms, along with a hail of plasma and bullets were deflected and blown back a few meters.

Out of the corner of his eyes, to his left, he saw Kelly successfully wielding another hammer. Several carbine and spiker wielding Flood-Brutes had been blown back to pulp when she slammed the weapon into the ground. That was two down for the Flood-Brutes with the hammers, three more to go.

Ever an opportunist, Lucy, Tom, and Falcon jumped into the initial breathing room and with the combined firepower of plasma rifles, SMGs, and the large blade-tipped shotgun blew back another few meters of muddy ground for all of them. “Hold!” he ordered over TEAMCOM. As much as he wanted to advance position, they had to hold the hill and even now, they were in danger of being flanked.

Their break in advance and the split second silence of no gunfire filling the air was shattered when the sky darkened for a second as combat and tank forms leapt through the advancing rank, just as the remaining three hammer-wielding Flood-Brutes leapt with them. The unnatural speed at which the Flood reacted gave Fred barely enough time to react and bring his weapon up to deflect and hold at bay the snarling deformed face of a hammer-wielding Flood-Brute. The force of the impact of the two weapons against each other negated the outward shockwave, but was enough that he felt as if he had been sucker punched in his gut by a very large fist.

His shields completely drained and his armor’s hydrostatic gel tried to compensate for the force of the impact as he pushed back with all his strength against the already unnaturally strong creature. The combat and tank forms that had flown through the air slammed all around him and the rest of his team. He managed to lash out with a foot as he sunk a bit into the mud from the pressure that was bearing down on him, cracking a knee of the Flood-Brute, causing the deformed behemoth to falter for a second.

That was all he needed as he heaved the beast off him and twirled the blade-tipped hammer around and smashed it straight into the beast, slicing it and several combat forms cleanly in half. The top heavy weapon’s momentum carried him through as he spun in a full 360 circle, clamping his other hand down, half way through his circular arc, on the weapon, sending the several tanks into the air while the others flew back from the shockwave.

But even before the air cleared around him, a globular acid spit from the ranged Flood Launchers along with a flurry of meter-long spikes from the long-ranged combat Flood forms sailed through the air. He smashed the hammer to the ground, deflecting most of the acid and spikes before the weapon suddenly spluttered and died. Droplets of the unsuccessfully deflected acid ate through the shoulder joints of his armor and burned against his skin. Instead of discarding the useless Gravity Hammer, he used it as a bludgeon, and snapped the blade up with all his strength at a Flood-Brute that was about to smash him into the ground.

The hammer lodged itself into the Brute and he let it go as the dead Flood went sailing through the air. Snatching up a dropped spiker and needler from the ground, he sent five white spikes straight into the open maw of a Flood-Elite while tracking a hellish blur of glowing pink needles in a half-arc around him. As he slowly backed up and reloaded the needler, several more spikes leapt from the weapon in his left hand until the covering fire of blue plasma bolts sailed from his right side as Tom appeared, giving him precious seconds to reload the spiker.

Both he and Tom leapt to either side as three plasma grenades flew through the air and stuck to the ground where they had been a second ago. The resulting explosion nearly deafened him as he stumbled a bit, but he kept his hand steady, tracking and killing the nearest enemies to Tom who was quickly shaking off the effects of the combined grenades.

A blur of holy hell suddenly tore through the advancing ranks, scattering many and literally caused the advancing horde to actually pause. Fred, Kelly, Lucy, and Tom dropped several stunned Flood forms before they had a chance to recover from their stupor. In less than three seconds, the blur stopped at the base of the hill and somehow, Fred was not surprised to see that the hellish blur had been Falcon, dual wielding two inactive hammers, covered in Flood guts.

Before he could even blink, Falcon had thrown one of the hammers to Kelly, who dropped the plasma rifles she had been wielding and secured a two-handed grip on the hammer. Fred couldn’t tell if it was just a trick of the light, but it seemed that the advancing ranks, even the pure tanks and combat forms that were about to jump had suddenly flinched as soon as both Gravity Hammers were activated. In the ranks of the enemy, the lone Flood-Brute that wielded the last hammer challengingly snarled.

Despite the adrenaline rushing through him, dulling the pain from the multitude of injuries that wracked his body, Fred grimly smiled. Let the Flood taste some fear from the two fastest Spartans on Red Team, before the entire planet was blown to bits. The first wave had softened them up, but the Spartans were not giving up yet – not while any of them had the breath of life in them. His mission countdown timer read five minutes.

 

* * *

 

Carrier forms that waddled up to the Master Chief like reunited best pals were shredded to pieces by the hail of bullets from the two SMGs that he wielded. Their explosions caused his shield to flare as the multitude of infection forms that escaped the carnage being spread by the SMGs slammed against his already rapidly draining shield. He only had seven meters to go until he reached the unlocked door to the Sentinel control facility.

Two combat forms leapt at him and he raked both SMGs into their bodies, ripping them apart as the popcorn Flood surged again. He reloaded one and continued to fire with the other while advancing backwards. The corridors connecting to this particular one were dim and he had already shunted his headlamp power to the shields, relying on his eye sight and tracker, which on the periphery, showed two enormous blobs approaching. He couldn’t last much longer in this place.

Firing one more short burst into the advancing enemy, he turned and sprinted as fast as he could, covering the last few meters in less than a second. The Forerunner door automatically opened and as soon as he skidded through, it slammed shut and he briefly heard a ping that locked it – as if something knew that his presence needed it locked.

However, he dared not move from his position at the door as he stared at exactly what the enormous monstrosity that was clinging to the control facility’s enormous far wall. The slime-mucus-covered grotesque, misshapen, and quite engorged-looking Venus flytrap of the Gravemind was plastered against the facility’s wall, with several of its long tentacles flailing about. Tiny motes of Sentinels flitted about, relentlessly zapping it with their lasers as John spotted a familiar-looking glowing circular eye – a Monitor, also engaged in mortal combat with the Gravemind.

The enraged Gravemind roared, and he felt it through his bones. However, it seemed that none of them had noticed John’s arrival and in the center of the facility were the control mechanisms for the Sentinels. He clung to the shadows as he approached, keeping his SMGs trained on both the Sentinels and the Gravemind but when the shadows could no longer protect him, he risked the open chamber and sprinted the last few meters to the slightly glowing structure covered in Forerunner symbols.

“Cortana, I’m in,” he whispered through COM.

That was a grave mistake for him for suddenly, the Gravemind howled, causing large chunks of debris to fall from the ceiling as two acidic slime-covered tentacles lashed out from underneath the ground John had been standing on.

He held down the trigger and shredded the tentacles before either one could ram straight through him. Flecks of acid burned and hissed against his shields. Ruby red light seared through his vision, just as he glanced up to see a powerful beam leap from the ‘eye’ of the Monitor controlling the Sentinels and slam straight into the gaping maw of the Gravemind.

[Do not deactivate the summon, Reclaimer.]

“Don’t listen to it Chief!” Cortana’s voice suddenly rang in his ears. “I’m pulling the translations right now! Hold tight!”

Several more tentacles sprung up from the ground and batted at him as he dodged and rolled away, spraying concentrated bursts of fire at the tentacles whenever he could. He was barely aware that the Sentinels or the Monitor had actually retreated a bit while still zapping the Gravemind, but were now forming a convex semi-circle around the central facility.

[I am Mendicant Bias. Your construct should know me.]

“No way…” John heard the surprise in Cortana’s voice as soon as he saw the message crawl across his HUD.

“Twice the betrayer, never more shall you live! You shall join your creators in their graves!” the Gravemind roared, the subsonic voice suddenly giving John a throbbing headache that passed as quickly as it came.

“Not if I can help it, buster!” Cortana’s angry voice shouted through John’s external speaker. “Remember little old me?” the sarcastically sweet tone of the AI laced with a healthy dose of venom blared across his ears.

This time, the entire facility and the ground beneath John shook enough that he had to kneel down to maintain his balance as the Gravemind blasted the place with an ear-piercing ultrasonic bellow. But he kept a steady burst of covering fire at the viciously lashing tentacles as the Sentinels continued to zap the overgrown Venus flytrap like annoying gnats. He trusted Cortana to know what she was doing, and even though she had initially told him not to listen to the Monitor and was now actually seemingly helping the Monitor.

He remembered seeing some bits and pieces of information about Mendicant Bias when he and the Arbiter had passed through several nodes on Installation 04b. He also remembered reading the reports from the Forerunner ship that had been commandeered from Onyx. There had been a fragment of the construct known as Mendicant Bias who had held off the Flood long enough for the nuclear weapon to be activated and destroy the infested ship.

“Way to piss off the flytrap,” he murmured mostly to himself as he leapt out of the way of several more tentacles that tried to stab him. In retaliation, he fired back, shredding more to pieces that uselessly flopped onto the ground.

[Go back to your construct, Reclaimer. The time for the complete atonement for all my sins has arrived. They’re here.]

“Chief! We’ve got incoming reinforcements…and they’re not UNSC or Covenant,” Cortana said. “They’re Sentinels…and they’re actually helping us!”

“Are the bombs armed?” he asked, continuing to fire as he emptied the last of his SMG clips, threw the useless weapons away and pulled out his assault rifle.

“One minute, Chief!”

[This is your path to the outer world Reclaimer. You and your kind have fought well, now let the eternal struggle between the unyielding demon and I resume.]

A map with a nav marker suddenly splayed across his HUD, indicating the path out. And as if to reinforce the strange Monitor’s allying behavior, several of the Sentinels broke off from attacking the Gravemind and instantly cleared a path between the Master Chief and the door in which he had just come through. Extending just a bit of trust that the Monitor was _not_ going to backstab him in the same fashion 343 Guilty Spark had done, he raced through the cleared path and the Sentinels followed him.

The door beyond unlocked and the Sentinels rushed past him, their golden beams blazing a fiery path of charred flesh and sliced ribbons of Flood. The Master Chief sprinted as fast as he could through the geometric alien corridors, retracing the backwards path he had taken to from the central core to here. Three Sentinels broke off from their skirmish with the Flood in the corridors and zipped after him, as if providing him with some semblance of a team to cover him and each other.

He concentrated his short bursts of rifle fire at the high priority targets that were about to attack him, well aware that he was running quite low on clips. Even if there was a way out of here, he was sure that it was fraught with Flood. As much as the Sentinels helped, there were only a few versus the infested planet.

Upon entering the control room, John found the Arbiter defending the other side of the catwalk from the oncoming horde that had broken through the previously locked door. The Sentinels surged ahead and he fired a few shots into a combat form that had leapt the distance between the entrance and the center platform, trying to catch the Arbiter off guard. The creature fell into the abyss below and John hurried to the Arbiter’s side. The near-life-like holographic size of Cortana was no longer visible next to the control console. There was a rumble that shook the very foundations of the structure, sending enormous chunks of the ceiling and walls crumbling down to the ground. Suddenly, machine and metal screeched and bent inwards as a torrent of single glowing eyed Sentinels with their beams primed and ready, burst through several solid layers and fired.

The swarm of Sentinels, some with glowing red eyes, some with blazing golden ocular weaponry, some with blue, and quite a few that looked like multi-eyed hideous creatures flew into the spherical chamber. All of them ignored the central core and its occupants and shredded the Flood into pieces. More than a few readied their beam weaponry and blasted another hole on the other side of the chamber and pursued the Flood with a vengeance that the Master Chief had never seen before.

He had seen the passive-aggressive put down of the Flood by the Sentinels that occupied the Installations, but the thousands of Sentinels that had initially swarmed into this chamber, which was still ongoing, seemed to be bent on pure revenge.

“They’re armed, Chief!” he barely heard Cortana’s triumphant shout in his ears over the loud buzzing noise that the Sentinels were making. “Fortunately, there’s a charge sequence, so we still have wiggle room.”

“Same as last time,” he grunted. “Can you send a transmission to the _Winter_ and the rest for immediate evac?”

“Now that the skies are full of those metallic buggers, yes I can,” Cortana said. A moment later she said, “Message sent. I also got a transmission from Mendicant Bias with a path out of this hell hole… Just give me the word and I’ll start the sequence.”

He knelt down beside Blue-Seven who had doffed his helmet and looked deathly pale. To the Spartan, he said, “Come on Spartan, we’re going home.”

“You can go Chief,” Neal weakly replied. “I think I’ll stay here and watch the fireworks from the ground.”

“Come, Demon,” the Arbiter rumbled from beside him. “We must leave while the numbers favor us.”

John knew that he had no choice, judging from Neal’s biosign that flashed red on his HUD. The first-generation Spartan was most likely not even going to make it half-way to the planet’s surface. He grasped the Spartan’s arm and felt a very weak response before Neal sucked in a shuddering breath and said, “Tell Falcon for me that ‘I forgive you’. It’s been an honor serving with you, Master Chief, but seriously, if you stay any longer, I’m going to have to kick your ass out of this place.”

John merely nodded as the Spartan weakly chuckled before he let go and stood up. He un-slotted the AI chip from the port housing and held it near the console, saying, “Light it up.”

“Done,” the AI replied almost instantly and transferred herself into the data chip, to which John slotted it back into the armor’s AI port, feeling the familiar liquid cool sensation spread through the base of his skull and neck. “ _Come on, Spartan – go, go, go!_ ”

 

* * *

 

“Multiple contacts on approach! Inbound vector towards us and the planet!” Calista’s voice sounded across the speakers throughout the ship, barely heard over the blaring alarms. Acrid smoke and fire burned all over all the decks, sparing nothing, but still, the crew of the _Ember of Winter_ continued to pour their firepower at the ships that surrounded them. Drifting lazily to the port of the _Winter_ , but still with over half of her guns blazing was the _Medea Minerva_. She was barely with any power, having almost been sheared in half by several concentrated volleys. Even without an AI, the manual targeting vectors were still being drawn up from the _Minerva_ as her captain, Captain James Cutter, and crew continued to hammer nearby enemy Flood ships.

_Seville_ , with her captain and crew, were only fragments in space now, having taken most of the brunt of several incoming volleys that had been headed towards the _Winter_. At the last minute, Lieutenant Commander Victoria Wittaker had forced the _Seville_ into the nearest Flood-possessed Covenant dreadnought, destroying it and her ship. Jake had returned the sacrifice with an enormous volley of missiles from the _Winter_.

The only ship that seemed to have stayed relatively intact while taking over half of the initial volleys when they had emerged from Slipspace over two-and-a-half hours ago was the Covenant vessel named _Glorious Countenance_. Bright blue and purple volleys of plasma continued to lance out of her many gun ports as she glided past several Flood-possessed UNSC ships, determined to take them out.

“Commander! They’re Sentinels and there are trillions of them! ETA fifteen-seconds!”

“All hands!” Jake violently coughed from the smoke, but managed to push one of the buttons on the Communications’ console that was still working for the ship-wide broadcast. “Brace for Sentinel impact!”

Those fifteen seconds passed in a flash before his eyes as he staggered back in half-gravity to the navigation table and saw the blips fuzz and up as an enormous swarm of red appeared on the periphery of the table. He braced himself for the impact like a million hornets that were about to attack a person for disturbing their nest, but fifteen seconds passed and there was absolutely nothing except for the distant whumps of missiles being launched from his ship.

“What the hell?” he hoarsely whispered as he stared at the changing dynamic of the battlefield that was laid out on the holographic table before him.

“Sir…the Sentinels…they’re attacking the Flood…” A moment later, Calista said, “Incoming transmission from Cortana! They’re requesting evac! They’ve done it! It’s armed and ready to blow like hell!”

“Send evac in, and get the same message to the _Minerva_ and _Countenance_! Do it in Morse code if you have to!” he ordered. “We’re not leaving anyone behind!”

“Done,” the AI replied. “ _Minerva_ says that she cannot go into Slipspace.”

“Tell Captain Cutter to evac her crew. The _Countenance_ and _Winter_ will try to pick up as many of her crews as possible,” he said.

“Bridge crew unable to get to the lifepods,” Calista replied after a moment. “They’re stuck.”

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. They had neither the time nor the manpower to extract the _Minerva_ ’s bridge crew. “Tell her to get as far away from the system as she can, now. We’ll cover her for as long as possible.”

“Captain Cutter tells you to go to hell because he’s still in charge of this fleet,” the AI replied after a few moments. “He’s ordering us outbound as soon as we pick the people up from the planet.”

“Maneuver us as close to the _Minerva_ as you can, Calista. Send the same order to the _Countenance_. We’re going to try to take as many of her crew in as possible.”

“Done and done,” she replied.

After a moment of silence which was still filled by the blaring alarms, he calmly said, “Calista, unlock and arm missile in pod twenty-seven-dash-delta.”

“Sir,” the AI began protesting, “The Spartans have done it…its mission success…there’s no need for it--”

“Authorization code beta-two-nine-dash-zee-gee-three-one-dash-aye-seven-zee. Passcode three words: I miss them,” he interrupted the AI.

“NOVA bomb unlocked and armed,” Calista’s voice suddenly became monotone and mechanical for a moment before she seemingly recovered and said, “Sir, I must protest! Our people are still on the surface!”

“I know,” he said. “I know. Set timer for seven seconds and as soon as our people are on board this ship and the _Countenance_ , launch it and get us into Slipspace. I’m not going have those Flood bastards follow us back home.”

 

* * *

 

The Flood-blotched skies of the Forerunner planet continued to rain acidic globules down on the defending Spartans as the Flood ground forces continued to march in on them from all sides. With two dropped energy swords from former Flood-Elites in his hands, Fred viciously slashed and stabbed as many high-flying combat forms as he could. The air around him and the other Spartans, now slowly being crowded together as the Flood started to successfully route from the east and west, was incredibly noxious and foul smelling. That was only because several layers and trails of the acidic globules had been lit on fire.

Only a lunatic would actually wield a flamethrower as if it were a melee weapon, but that was what Blue-Three, Douglas, Blue-Five, Julia, and one of the Elites were doing. The three of them had doused several Flood forms in fire, while the other Spartans and Elites had shot, sliced, even just plain old battered with their fists at the incoming forces.

The sun blotched out again, but this time, instead of the acid that was about to bear down on them again, Fred looked up to see a vast, dark cloud of _something_ that stretched across the horizon. His mission timer beeped 0:00.

Trillions upon trillions of Sentinels blanketed the skies of the Forerunner planet as they screamed down through the atmosphere, lighting the entire sky from black to an unholy orange-red color. In less than a second, Fred could see the faint glowing ocular pieces of their ‘eyes’ and weapons bearing down upon them. But instead of a hailstorm of golden beams lancing down into the Spartans and Elites, the golden storm rained down onto the Flood.

In less than seven seconds, the battlefield in the valley of the Forerunner planet was reduced to only the charred remains of the Flood. Not one Spartan or Elite had been touched. His mind reeled at what had just happened, but there was no time for an assessment. Following the enormous swarm of Sentinels that continued to blaze down from space and spread throughout the planet was a fleet of battered transports, both UNSC and Covenant, with half of the transports splitting off from the main group that was headed straight towards the Spartans and Elites.

A new alert popped onto Fred’s HUD, and it took him a moment to recognize it as a charging countdown from Cortana. “All teams, evac now!” he ordered over SQUADCOM, raising his hand and gestured towards the incoming transports. “Get the wounded and _triple_ time it!”

Whatever had just happened, it would have to wait. In the time it took him to order the Spartans and Elites to move, the charging countdown timer had leapt from 0% to 10%. Though he was grateful for the alert, he cycled through the COM channels, hoping to catch the Master Chief’s signal, but there was no transmission from either the AI or the Master Chief. Where were they?

 

* * *

 

“This warthog run is getting a little old,” Cortana quipped as soon as the Master Chief and the Arbiter arrived at the marker that Mendicant Bias had indicated. The underground corridors of the Forerunner structure had opened up to this enormous cavern and near the entrance to what John could only assume as their only way out, were several bodies of Marines, ODSTs and dead Flood. A still smoldering hunk of what used to be a warthog sat near the entrance as several Sentinels flitted in after the Master Chief and the Arbiter, ocular weapons glowing quite brightly, ready to blast the Flood into mush.

“It’s a mongoose,” he replied, quickly straddling the driver’s seat of the only vehicle in the place that was not a smoking ruin of metal and wires while the Arbiter slung himself into the back and braced himself.

“Whatever. I’ve sent a beacon ahead to one of the transports! Let’s move, Chief!”

“Though I was not present when you’ve done this the first time, perhaps it is as you Humans say: the third time is the charm,” the Arbiter rumbled as John gunned the engine and sped off into the twisting corridors that would lead them to the surface.

Luminous light-reflecting corridors of the unnatural cavern zipped by the Master Chief’s vision as he pushed the tiny vehicle to its top speed of 60 kph, careful to keep his and his passenger’s balance as they tore through the place. He could see the slow rising of the corridor towards the surface as Sentinels zipped along with him, acting like an armed escort. Occasionally, one would flit ahead, as if scouting, but always came back to the group before the Master Chief smashed into it.

The luminous walls surrounding them violently shook as the agonized _scream_ of the Gravemind blasted throughout the place. John pressed on and willed the little vehicle to go faster.

“Charging sequence at fifty-percent!”

Not five seconds later, Cortana said, “Seventy!”

There was light at the end of this long tunnel and the vehicle flew through the air for a few seconds as it ripped out of the corridor at top speed. John could see a Pelican only a thousand meters from where they were, its belly facing their vector. He could barely see the other transports already three-quarters up into the sky, flying as fast as they could from the doomed planet. The mongoose landed roughly on the uneven terrain, almost throwing both him and the Arbiter off, but at the last second, the Arbiter shifted his weight and the vehicle tipped upright.

“Eighty! Hurry, Chief!”

All around them as they charged through the last thousand meters towards the Pelican, Flood and Sentinels were engaged in mortal combat. It was a scene that the Master Chief never forgot, having seen it twice before, except this time, this was on a planet that was about to explode. He continued to red-line the mongoose as the Sentinel escorts peeled off to engage the Flood.

“Floor it, Chief! Right into its belly!”

The tiny vehicle with its passengers zoomed off the cliff at the end and straight into the belly of the Pelican which was already initiating a full thruster burn up into space. The brakes screeched and smoked as John tried to stop the vehicle from crashing into the forward bulkhead. Both he and the Arbiter tumbled end over end as their momentum threw them off the smoking derelict and into the forward bulkhead.

“Ninety, Chief,” Cortana said as the Pelican’s belly closed before the dead mongoose could slip out. “We’re almost clear.”

“Show me,” he said, sinking back onto the floor as he rolled out from the Spartan-shaped dent he had made in the forward bulkhead while the Arbiter sat on the floor with his back to the Elite-shaped dent.

“It’s at full charge and its firing.”

A grainy aft camera from one of the Pelican’s camera ports popped up on his HUD and he watched as the planet seemingly started to collapse, as if a giant sinkhole had formed. It was slow at first, but without warning, it suddenly accelerated and to John, it looked as if there was a massive black hole sucking in the planet. Just as he felt some gravity settle in his stomach and the Pelican’s camera start to blank out as the transport made it into the hangar of the _Ember of Winter_.

 

The UNSC _Ember of Winter_ and Sangheili vessel _Glorious Countenance_ shimmered blue-white and vanished into Slipspace, but not before the _Winter_ dropped its final package.

In the darkness of space, where the glowing beams of Sentinels continued to scythe through the parasitic life forms that threatened the extinction of the entire galaxy, the collapsing planet below suddenly bloomed into an enormous ball of white-hot fire. A heartbeat later and at the end of its seven-second countdown, a second star was born in conjunction with the planet-star as the fourth and final NOVA bomb exploded.

Every ship and three nearby moons and planets of the Forerunner solar system instantly vaporized while two other planets cracked and shattered into millions of fragmented dust. The last significant presence of the Flood was now only ashes and echoes.

 

~*~*~*~


	11. Chapter 11

**Epilogue**

September 31, 2576 (Military Calendar)

 

In the month that it took the combined UNSC-Sangheili forces to successfully implement Operation NOVA and return to friendly territories, the dissemination of information regarding the Flood-borne pathogen was sent to all colonies. Verified by independent sources, Insurrectionists and the UNSC both exhausted many of the fighting on several worlds that had broken out, but not all the fires had been put out.

High rising flames of rebellion had been quelled a bit to make way for the possibility of negotiation and peace talks, but not all parties had come to accept their lot in life. Though the gesture of good faith and first signs of cooperation were only beginning to show by the time the Spartans and the beleaguered crew of the UNSC _Ember of Winter_ arrived at Reach, dissent was still running strong. The months and years that followed were tumultuous, but Humanity remained ever strong and stubborn…

The crews of the UNSC _Medea Minerva_ and UNSC _Seville_ were honored for their sacrifices in the line of duty, while the surviving crew of the _Ember of Winter_ was celebrated for their bravery. In the aftermath, the UNSC revealed to the public that they had kept several Spartans in cryo throughout the end of the war and had only recently recovered the infamous Master Chief Spartan-117, utilizing all the Spartans in the direst time that Humanity faced from the galaxy of unknown.

General details of Operation NOVA were revealed to the public and with the combined footages from several mission recorders and the very threat that had been posed to Humanity; the mythic tales of the Spartans was instantly rekindled. The morale boost was enormous, but the whispers of rebellion continued.

Now that the UNSC had revealed their ace in the hole, the extremists from the Insurrectionists were even more determined to level the playing field…

 

~*~*~*~

 

FINI


End file.
